"St. Martin's Paperbacks historical romance"--Spine.

In From Nicopolis to Mohács, Tamás Pálosfalvi offers an account of Ottoman-Hungarian warfare from its start in the late fourteenth century to the battle of Mohács in 1526.

After the shock of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which Hungarians perceived as an unfair dictate, the leaders of the country found it imperative to change Hungary’s international image in a way that would help the revision of the post-World War I settlement. The monograph examines the development of interwar Hungarian cultural diplomacy in three areas: universities, the tourist industry, and the media—primarily motion pictures and radio production. It is a story of the Hungarian elites’ high hopes and deep-seated anxieties about the country’s place in a Europe newly reconstructed after World War I, and how these elites perceived and misperceived themselves, their surroundings, and their own ability to affect the country’s fate. The defeat in the Great War was crushing, but it was also stimulating, as Nagy documents in his examination of foreign language journals, tourism, radio, and other tools of cultural diplomacy. The mobilization of diverse cultural and intellectual resources, the author argues, helped establish Hungary’s legitimacy in the international arena, contributed to the modernization of the country, and established a set of enduring national images. Though the study is rooted in Hungary, it explores the dynamic and contingent relationship between identity construction and transnational cultural and political currents in East-Central European nations in the interwar period.

This pioneering volume of essays explores the destruction of great libraries since ancient times and examines the intellectual, political and cultural consequences of loss. Fourteen original contributions, introduced by a major re-evaluative history of lost libraries, offer the first ever comparative discussion of the greatest catastrophes in book history from Mesopotamia and Alexandria to the dispersal of monastic and monarchical book collections, the Nazi destruction of Jewish libraries, and the recent horrifying pillage and burning of books in Tibet, Bosnia and Iraq.

This book offers a new, salutogenic, perspective on the development of early modern cities by exploring profound and complex ways in which architecture and landscape design served to promote public health on an urban scale. Focusing on fifteenth- through nineteenth-century Europe, it addresses the histories of spaces and institutions that supported salubrious living, highlighting the intersections of medical theory, government policy, and architectural practice in designing, improving, and monumentalizing the infrastructure of sanitation and healthcare. Studies in this book highlight the joint role of design thinking and scientific practice in reforming the facilities for treating and preventing disease; the impact of cross-cultural exchange on early modern strategies of urban improvement; and the creation of new therapeutic environments through state, communal, and private initiatives concerned with the preservation of physical and mental health, from recreational landscapes to spa resorts.

Documenting the History of Religions in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1950‒1970) offers an account of the activities of the “International Association for the History of Religions” during the Cold War, based on new findings from the archives of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

In 1683, two empires - the Ottoman, based in Constantinople, and the Habsburg dynasty in Vienna - came face to face in the culmination of a 250-year power struggle: the Great Siege of Vienna. Within the city walls the choice of resistance over surrender to the largest army ever assembled by the Turks created an all-or-nothing scenario: every last survivor would be enslaved or ruthlessly slaughtered. The Turks had set their sights on taking Vienna, the city they had long called 'The Golden Apple' since their first siege of the city in 1529. Both sides remained resolute, sustained by hatred of their age-old enemy, certain that their victory would be won by the grace of God. Eastern invaders had always threatened the West: Huns, Mongols, Goths, Visigoths, Vandals and many others. The Western fears of the East were vivid and powerful and, in their new eyes, the Turks always appeared the sole aggressors. Andrew Wheatcroft's extraordinary book shows that this belief is a grievous oversimplification: during the 400 year struggle for domination, the West took the offensive just as often as the East. As modern Turkey seeks to re-orient its relationship with Europe, a new generation of politicians is exploiting the residual fears and tensions between East and West to hamper this change. The Enemy at the Gate provides a timely and masterful account of this most complex and epic of conflicts.