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Czechoslavakia: 1918 to the Present (A New History of Modern Europe)
By B Frommer
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Description
For a relatively small country Czechoslovakia has been central to the development of twentieth-century Europe. In 1918 Czech and Slovak leaders played a critical part in burying Habsburg Austria-Hungary and anchoring the Versailles system, for better or worse. In 1938 the conflict over Czechoslovakia’s Sudeten borderlands set Europe sliding into the abyss of the Second World War. One decade later the communist takeover of February 1948 signaled the onset of the Cold War. In 1968 the Prague Spring first offered hope to a world seeking socially just government, then dashed the dreams of the Left for communist reform. Finally, the 1989 Velvet Revolution drew the attention of the world back to Czechoslovakia and its new philosopher king, playwright Vaclav Havel.
Even today, a considerable number of Czech and Slovaks are household names in the English-speaking world. One need only think of writers such as Milan Kundera and sports stars such as Martina Navratilova. Since 1989 millions of foreign tourists have discovered the incomparable beauty of Prague and the Czech and Slovak countryside. The result is considerable public and scholarly interest in a land that Neville Chamberlain once infamously dismissed as “a far away country [inhabited by] people of whom we know nothing.”
Czechoslovakia is well suited to a single-volume history. The country’s three-quarter of a century existence was akin the narrative of a human life. Czechoslovakia had a heralded and hopeful birth (October 28, 1918) and it had a mournful but peaceful death ( January 1, 1993). In between, amidst all the highs and lows of any existence, the country even had a traumatic mid-life crisis, resulting in its 1938-1939 break-up and then its reunification in 1945.
Product details
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Edition:
- 1
- Number of Pages:
- 304
- Release Date:
- 2010-04-13
- Publication Date:
- 2010-04-13
- Publisher:
- Wiley-Blackwell (an imprint of John Wiley & Sons Ltd)
- Languages:
- Published: English, Original: English
- ISBN10:
- 1405158336
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