László Bíró's last name is, in much of the world, a synonym for his revolutionary writing tool. But few people know that Bíró began his career in interwar Budapest as a journalist frustrated with spotty ink; that he escaped fascism by fleeing to Paris and, finally, to Buenos Aires; that a fellow Hungarian, Andor Goy, also played a vital role in the pen's development⎯and that, in a tragic twist of shared fate, business pressures and politics ultimately deprived both men of their rights to t...

How do political parties integrate propaganda into ordinary citizens' lives? After coming into power in 1948, the communist Hungarian Workers' Party (MDP) drew on tried-and-true Soviet methods of political outreach, mobilizing a network of agitators to circulate communist ideology and report their observations back to party leadership. These agitators produced maps, searched homes, and taught "petty bourgeois" self-criticism and "party-conform" love and hate.Making the Hungaria...

From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, the Capetian House of Anjou was one of Europe's most significant ruling dynasties, with dominions extending across the continent from the French province that gave them their name to the kingdoms of Hungary and Poland. The House of Anjou was the tie that bound together these diverse countries with varying levels of development, divergent institutions, and far-flung geographies.The Angevins in Hungary 1301–1395 traces the lives ...

Between 1956 and 1963, the United Nations grappled with the "Hungarian question"; namely, what it should do about the events and aftermath of the country's 1956 Revolution. Cold War tensions, anxieties over the concurrent Suez crisis, and ignorance and indifference about Hungary influenced how UN member states responded to this "internal affair" and its potentially dangerous effects on international relations.Diplomacy and Disregard draws upon previously inaccessible docum...

At the dawn of the twentieth century, three trailblazing women's associations emerged from the Austro-Hungarian middle class: Vienna's Allgemeiner österreichischer Frauenverein (AöF) and Budapest's closely linked Nőtisztviselők Országos Egyesülete (NOE) and Feministák Egyesülete (FE). Spearheaded by educated professional women, these groups championed progressive and often radical ideals, forging robust international connections with other women's movements. However, the shifting political...

The Hungarian defeat to the Ottoman army at the pivotal Battle of Mohács in 1526 led to the division of the Kingdom of Hungary into three parts, altering both the shape and the ethnic composition of Central Europe for centuries to come. Hungary thus became a battleground between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires.In this sweeping historical survey, Géza Pálffy takes readers through a crucial period of upheaval and revolution in Hungary, which had been the site of a f...

Argentina, 1950: Bernie Gunther arrives in Buenos Aires only to be caught up in the hunt for a killer. A young girl has been murdered in circumstances that strongly resemble those of Bernie's final case as a Berlin homicide detective, a case he didn't solve.The local chief of police is convinced that the killer is to be found among the several thousand ex-Nazis who have come to Argentina since 1945. So who better than Bernie Gunther to help track him down?

How American race law provided a blueprint for Nazi GermanyNazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In Hitler's American Model, James Whitman presents a detailed investigation of the American impact on the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi regime. Contrary to those...

A New York Times BestsellerThe definitive history of Ukraine from antiquity to today.**“An admirable new history.... In his elegant and careful exposition of Ukraine’s past, Mr. Plokhy has also provided some signposts to the future.” ―**EconomistAs Ukraine is embroiled in an ongoing struggle with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independen...

The personal story of a young Jewish girl trapped in Nazi Germany. Separated from her younger sister, Edith and her mother witness the farce of the Red Cross visit to Terezin, escape the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and survive the labor camps of the Russian Front. This is a story of horror and miracles, and of triumph against all odds.

From a National Jewish Book Award–winning author: The "revelatory and shocking" investigation into the CIA's liberation of Nazi war criminals ( Kirkus Reviews).How did Gen, Karl Wolff, one of the highest-ranking members of the Nazi Party's Waffen-SS, who personally oversaw the deportation of three hundred thousand Jews to the Treblinka extermination camps, escape prosecution at the Nuremberg trials? As revealed in this groundbreaking investigation—culled fr...

In the spring of 1945, as the German army fell in defeat and the world first learned of the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust, few would have expected that, only half a century later, the Germans would emerge as a prosperous people at the forefront of peaceful European integration. How did the Germans manage to recover from the shattering experience of defeat in World War II and rehabilitate themselves from the shame and horror of the Holocaust? In After Hitler, Konrad H. Jaraus...