Hardcover book with Dusk jacket cover (front and back) depicting scenes of Slovak life in America. The dust jacket has not yet been designed.

No other city in the United States is home to more Slovaks than Pittsburgh. It is estimated that close to 100,000 Slovak immigrants came to the area in the 1890s looking for work and the chance for a better life. The hills and valleys of this new land reminded newcomers of the farms, forests, and mountains they left behind. They lived in neighborhoods close to their work, forming numerous cluster communities in such places as Braddock, Duquesne, Homestead, Munhall, the North Side, Rankin, and Swissvale. Once settled, Slovak immigrants founded their own churches, schools, fraternal benefit societies, and social clubs. Many of these organizations still enjoy an active presence in Pittsburgh today, serving to pass on the customs and traditions of the Slovak people. Through nearly 200 photographs, Slovak Pittsburgh celebrates the lives of those Slovaks who settled in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania, and the rich heritage that is their legacy.

Until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, Slovakia's identity seemed inextricably linked with that of the former state. This book explores the key moments and themes in the history of Slovakia from the Duchy of Nitra's ninth-century origins to the establishment of independent Slovakia at midnight 1992–3. Leading scholars chart the gradual ethnic awakening of the Slovaks during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and examine how Slovak national identity took shape with the codification of standard literary Slovak in 1843 and the subsequent development of the Slovak national movement. They show how, after a thousand years of Magyar-Slovak coexistence, Slovakia became part of the new Czechoslovak state from 1918–39, and shed new light on its role as a Nazi client state as well as on the postwar developments leading up to full statehood in the aftermath of the collapse of communism in 1989. There is no comparable book in English on the subject.

An engaging pictorial history of the Slovak community in Chicagoland, documenting their journeys and struggles through rare and vintage images. The story of Slovak Americans in Chicagoland is a tale of the American dream. In a few short years, emigrants from Slovakia with little to their names came to the United States and succeeded beyond their highest hopes. This fascinating story of "rags to riches" has been documented in historical photographs in Images of America: Slovaks of Chicagoland. Many Slovaks came to America with few assets, no more than a sixth-grade education, and no knowledge of the English language. They went to school and became naturalized citizens. Many took menial jobs in stockyards, steel mills, and oil refineries. They saved their money and opened grocery stores, banks, construction firms, and other businesses. Slovaks built beautiful churches, quality schools, and recreational facilities. They raised their families to be proud Americans and incorporated traditions from Slovakia into their daily lives, including the important role of religion.

Race was all over the immigrant newspaper week after week. As early as the 1890s the papers of the largest Slovak fraternal societies covered lynchings in the South. While somewhat sympathetic, these articles nevertheless enabled immigrants to distance themselves from the "blackness" of victims, and became part of a strategy of asserting newcomers' tentative claims to "whiteness." Southern and eastern European immigrants began to think of themselves as white people. They asserted their place in the U.S. and demanded the right to be regarded as "Caucasians," with all the privileges that accompanied this designation. Circa 1900 eastern Europeans were slightingly dismissed as "Asiatic" or "African," but there has been insufficient attention paid to the ways immigrants themselves began the process of race tutoring through their own institutions. Immigrant newspapers offered a stunning array of lynching accounts, poems and cartoons mocking blacks, and paeans to America's imperial adventures in the Caribbean and Asia. Immigrants themselves had a far greater role to play in their own racial identity formation than has so far been acknowledged.

The essays in the book compare the Czech Republic and Slovakia since the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993. The papers deal with the causes of the divorce and discuss the political, economic and social developments in the new countries. This is the only English-language volume that presents the synoptic findings of leading Czech, Slovak, and North American scholars in the field. The authors include two former Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, eight leading scholars (four Czechs and four Slovaks), and eight knowledgeable commentators from North America. The most significant new insight is that in spite of predictions by various pundits in the Western World that Czechia would flourish after the breakup and Slovakia would languish, the opposite has happened. While the Czech Republic did well in its early years, it is now languishing while Slovakia, which had a rough start, is now doing very well. Anyone interested in the history of the Czech and Slovak Republics over the last twenty years will find gratification in reading this book.

A look into the life of Brendel's Slovak family, who settled in Price County, Wisconsin, around the turn of the century. In examining her grandmother's life, Brendel reflects a Slovak family history symbolic of many of the immigrants who came from Eastern Europe.