This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Go to bag

My Library Bag

Requests (0)

SEND TO LIBRARY

The middle kingdoms : a new history of Central Europe

ISBN: 9780141996271
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Press (UBD)
Origin: GB
Release Date: August, 2024

Book Details

Central Europe is not just a space on a map but also a region of shared experience, of mutual borrowings, impositions and misapprehensions. From the Roman Empire onwards, it has been the target of invasion from the east. In the Middle Ages, Central Europeans cast their eastern foes as ‘the dogmen’. They would later become the Turks, Swedes, Russians and Soviets, all of whom pulled the region apart and remade it according to their own vision. Competition yielded repeated cultural effervescences. This was the first home of the High Renaissance outside Italy, the cradle of the Reformation, the starting point of the Enlightenment, Romanticism, the symphony and modern nationalism. It was a permanent battleground too for religious and political ideas. This new history embraces the whole of Central Europe, including the German lands as well as Ukraine and Switzerland. The story of Europe’s Middle Kingdoms is a reminder of Central Europe’s precariousness, of its creativity and turbulence, and of the common cultural trends that make these lands so distinctive.