Books on East-Central Europe

This page is divided into three sections: journals, country books, and topic books.  If you have suggestions of books to add to the list, please email me at dlublin@aol.com.

The following is a sampling of scholarly journals with articles on East-Central European politics:

Eastern European Politics and Society; often called EEPS (yes, really).

Slavic Review

Nationalities Papers

Journal of Baltic Studies

The Baltic States

Anatol Lieven, The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence (Yale 1994).

Georg von Rauch, The Baltic States: The Years of Independence 1917-1940 (St. Martin’s 1995).

V. Stanley Vardys and Judith B. Sedaitis, Lithuania: The Rebel Nation (Westview 1997).

Rein Taagepera, Estonia: Return to Independence (Westview 1993).

Marja Missinen, Latvia’s Transition to a Market Economy: Political Determinants of Economic Reform Policy (St. Martin’s 1999).

Graham Smith, ed., The Baltic States: The National Self-Determination of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (Macmillan 1996).

Romuald Misiunas and Rein Taagepera, The Baltic States: Years of Dependence 1940-1990 (University of California 1993).

Toivo U. Raun, Estonia and the Estonians (Hoover 1991).

Andrejs Plakans, The Latvians: A Short History (Hoover 1995).

Juris Dreifelds, Latvia in Transition (Cambridge 1996).

John Hiden and Patrick Salmon, The Baltic Nations and Europe: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the Twentieth Century (Longman 1994).

Former Soviet Union

Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., New States, New Politics: Building the Post-Soviet Nations.

Czech and Slovak Republics

Carol Skalnik Leff, The Czech and Slovak Republics (Westview 1997).

Eric Stein, Czecho/Slovakia: Ethnic Conflict, Constitutional Fissure, Negotiated Breakup (Michigan 1997).

Former Yugoslavia: Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, and Vojvodina

Susan Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945-1990 (Princeton 1995).

Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History (HarperCollins 1999).

Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (NYU Press 1996).

Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War (Brookings 1995).

Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War (Penguin 1996).

Laura Silber and Allan Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (Penguin 1997).

Loring Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (Princeton 1995).

F.W. Carter and H.T. Norris, eds., The Changing Shape of the Balkans (Westview 1996).

Marcus Tanner, Croatia: A Nation Forged in War (Yale 1998).

Tim Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth, and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Yale 1997).

Radha Kumar, Divide and Fall? Bosnia in the Annals of Partition (Verso 1997).

Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

Brian Hall, The Impossible Country: A Journey Through the Last Days of Yugoslavia (Penguin 1995).

Slavenka Drakuliƒ, The Balkan Express: Fragments from the Other Side of the War (Norton 1993).

Albania

Miranda Vickers and James Pettifer, Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan Identity (NYU Press 1997).

Poland

Piotr S. Wandycz, The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918 (University of Washington 1993).

Piotr S. Wandycz, The United States and Poland (Harvard 1980).

Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland (Columbia 1984).

Hungary

Peter F. Sugar, ed., A History of Hungary (Indiana 1994).

Romania

Countess R.G. Waldeck, Athene Palace (Blue Ribbon Books 1942).

Ethnic Conflict and Minorities

David D. Laitin, Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Cornell 1998).

Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, eds., Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Democracy (Johns Hopkins 1994).

Isabel Fonseca, Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey (Knopf 1995).

Jeff Chinn and Robert Kaiser, Russians as the New Minority: Ethnicity and Nationalism in the Soviet Successor States (Westview 1996).

Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars (Indiana 1983).

Charles Hoffman, Gray Dawn: The Jews of Eastern Europe in the Post-Communist Era (HarperCollins 1992).

Graham Smith, ed., The Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States (Longman 1996).

Kumar Rupesinghe, Peter King, and Olga Vorkunova, eds., Ethnicity and Conflict in a Post-Communist World (St. Martin’s 1992).

David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, eds., The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear Diffusion, and Escalation (Princeton 1998).

Charles A. Kupchan, ed., Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe (Cornell 1995).

Hugh Poulton, The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict (Minority Rights Publications 1993).

Lucy Dawodowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945 (Doubleday 1991).

Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (Henry Holt 1987).

Martin Gilbert, Atlas of the Holocaust (William Morrow and Company 1993).

Democratization

Richard Rose, William Misher, and Christian Haerpfer, Democracy and its Alternatives: Understanding Post-Communist Societies (Johns Hopkins 1998).

Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott, The Consolidation of Democracy in East-Central Europe (Cambridge 1997).

Richard and Ben Crampton, Atlas of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century (Routledge 1996).

Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism (Random House 1995).

Timothy Garton Ash, The File: A Personal History (Vintage 1997).

Grzegorz Ekiert, The State Against Society: Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East Central Europe (Princeton 1996).

Regional Histories

Barbara Jelavich, History of the Balkans, Vols 1 and 2.

Charles and Barbara Jelavich, The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804-1920 (University of Washington 1977).

Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (University of Washington 1974).

Joseph Rothschild and Nancy M. Wingfield, Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II, Third Edition (Oxford 2000).

Paul G. Lewis, Central Europe Since 1945 (Longman 1994).

One to Avoid: The History of Eastern Europe for Beginners.  What can one say about a book that manages to devote space to the positive side (!) of Stalinism but gives no mention of the Holocaust and the extermination of European Jewry?   If you want to see my long review of the execrable book, check out my review on Amazon.

Travel Literature

Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Yugoslavia

Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (Vintage 1994).

Jason Goodwin, On Foot to the Golden Horn (Henry Holt 1993).

Countess R.G. Waldeck, Athene Palace (Blue Ribbon Books 1942). Romania

Brian Hall, The Impossible Country: A Journey Through the Last Days of Yugoslavia (Penguin 1995).

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The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the American University. If you have any questions about this page, please email David Lublin at dlublin@american.edu. This page was last updated on July 10, 1999.