Central European U. Press

Catalogue of the Slavonic cyrillic manuscripts of the National Széchényi Library.

The catalogue describes 56 manuscripts in the library in Budapest, most of which have never been described before and are therefore essentially unknown to scholarship. They are generally medieval manuscripts, but more recent material is included that comprises a continuation of earlier traditions. Only codices and fragments of codices are cited, and so not charters or other archival document, and principally documents written in the Slavonic languages, and so none of the collection's Rumanian cyrillic manuscripts. Supporting the catalogue are 75 photographic reproductions, some in color, and 39 pages of watermark drawings. Distributed in the US by Books International. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Heroes and villains; creating national history in contemporary Ukraine.

Marples (history and classics, U. of Alberta, Canada) explores how Ukrainians have narrated their historical experiences in books, scholarly papers, newspaper articles, and school textbooks in the years 1988-2005 in order to understand the role of history in constructing national identity as the country emerged from under Soviet rule. He focuses on the historical portrayal of some of the most traumatic experiences of the Stalinist period: the famine of 1932-33, the purges, the Nazi-Soviet pact, and German invasion and resistance. Distributed in the US by Books International. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

In a maelstrom; the history of Russian-Jewish prose (1860-1940).

Through research of 19th- and early-20th-century literary journals saved on microfilm, Hetényi compiled a large bibliography of lost Russian-Jewish literature. This volume presents an overview of the works of 18 authors, with frequent quotes included from their writings, and short biographies of each writer included in an appendix. The introduction discusses the genre of Russian-Jewish literature. Introductory essays to each thematic section discuss central issues including pogroms, and narrative in Jewish assimilation literature. Translated from the Hungarian by János Boris, the volume is distributed by Books International. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Measuring time, making history.

Lynn Hunt (history, UCLA) is a noted historian of the French Revolution. She has also written widely on historicity, which is the subject of these three lectures delivered at Central European University. Hunt draws on a number of other disciplines in her discussion of time, how we perceive it, how we codify it and what that means to how we arrange history. She discusses how the Western, Christian calendar has become the world standard and what that implies. Hunt argues for a revision of our tendency to periodize history. This slim book is densely packed with thought-provoking suggestions and surprising slants on time, modernity and history. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The nonconformists; culture, politics, and nationalism in a Serbian intellectual circle, 1944-1991.

Aiming to counter essentialist understandings of Serbs as fundamentally nationalistic, tending towards authoritarianism, and unable to escape their past with more nuanced understands of cultural processes and historical context for the development of political ideologies, Miller (history, Boise State U.) has produced a study of the intellectual development of Serbian novelist Dobrica Cosic, painter Mica Popovic, and literary critic Borislav Mihajlovic Mihiz. While Mihiz was always a sincere nationalist, the other two were more receptive to the idea of a post-ethnic communist order in the immediate aftermath of World War II, but had developed into communist regime opponents and convinced nationalists by the mid-1970s. While their role in building "intolerant and narcissistic" nationalism is not to be celebrated, Miller argues, it is important to understand that their intellectual stances were not static but instead developed in relation to their understanding of the failures of Titoist communism. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Past for the eyes; East European representations of communism in cinema and museums after 1989.

These 13 essays address the ways post-Soviet artists and media have come to represent people and events of the past, and the reasons why such representations vary from nostalgic to horrific. Contributors address such issues as official memories of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, film approaches to the secret service of Hungary, Forgác's approach to private and public pasts in Kádár's Kiss, reconstruction of events from communist archives, memories in the cinema of the former Yugoslavia and the current Russia, economic realities of memory in Poland, representations of Czech democracy and Polish communism, redistribution of memory of "survivors" in Hungary, exorcising the past in Romania and Bulgaria, and explanations of fascism and genocide in the Baltic. Distributed by Books International. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Past in the making; historical revisionism in Central Europe after 1989.

This collection of 12 essays closely examines the trajectory of revisionism, focusing on analysis of conditions in Central European states from Germany to Ukraine and Estonia. With the sure knowledge that the end of the Cold War and new technologies have brought democratization, or at least the potential for it, to academia, contributors cover the evidential evidence for historiographic revision and, the legal limits of historical interpretation, the argument whether historical revisionism is real or just re-dressed, the anti-fascist myth of the German Democratic Republic, the politics of national memory in the Czech Republic, creating Slovak and Hungarian memories, revisionism and the 1956 Hungarian rising, Poland's historians face politics and Ukraine's historian face famine, and the struggle for official recognition of the displaced in modern Estonia. Distributed by Books International. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The times of history; universal topics in Islamic historiography.

Al-Azmeh teaches at Central European University in Budapest. He has published widely in academic journals and is a specialist in medieval history. He has here gathered essays written between 1994 and 2005, adding a new one for this volume. The theme the joins the essays is that of the work of western historians of Islam. Al-Azmeh attempts to refute the simplistic way in which all Muslim communities throughout time are lumped together or put on a continuum with no possibility of variety. His writing shows the influence in both style and methodology, of German philosophers of history. Distributed by Boos International. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Trimming the sails; the comparative political economy of expansionary fiscal consolidations; a Hungarian perspective.

Sometimes, says Benczes (international economics and European studies, Corvinus U. of Budapest), cutting government expenditures — adjustments seems to be the polite phrase — really does stimulate the economy, as the rich people clamoring for tax cuts claim, but not very often. He takes his own country as an example to explore what factors seem to produce such non-Keynesian effects. He argues that the composition of the adjustment matters more than its size, and that a flexible labor market and/or coordinated wage bargaining mechanism helps a lot as well. Distributed in the US by Books International. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)