A cultural history of the Czech people, examining the significance of the small central European nation's artistic, literary, and political developments from its origins through approximately 1960.

A keen observer of culture, Czech writer Vladimír Macura (1945–99) devoted a lifetime to illuminating the myths that defined his nation. The Mystifications of a Nation, the first book-length translation of Macura’s work in English, offers essays deftly analyzing a variety of cultural phenomena that originate, Macura argues, in the “big bang” of the nineteenth-century Czech National Revival, with its celebration of a uniquely Czech identity. In reflections on two centuries of Czech history, he ponders the symbolism in daily life. Bridges, for example—once a force of civilization connecting diverse peoples—became a sign of destruction in World War I. Turning to the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, Macura probes a range of richly symbolic practices, from the naming of the Prague metro system, to the mass gymnastic displays of the Communist period, to post–Velvet Revolution preoccupations with the national anthem. In “The Potato Bug,” he muses on one of the stranger moments in the Cold War—the claim that the United States was deliberately dropping insects from airplanes to wreak havoc on the crops of Czechoslovakia. While attending to the distinctively Czech elements of such phenomena, Macura reveals the larger patterns of Soviet-brand socialism. “We were its cocreators,” he declares, “and its analysis touches us as a scalpel turned on its own body.” Writing with erudition, irony, and wit, Macura turns the scalpel on the authoritarian state around him, demythologizing its mythology.

On any weekend in Texas, Czech polka music enlivens dance halls and drinking establishments as well as outdoor church picnics and festivals. The songs heard at these venues are the living music of an ethnic community created by immigrants who started arriving in Central Texas in the mid-nineteenth century from what is now the Czech Republic. Today, the members of this community speak English but their songs are still sung in Czech. Czech Songs in Texas includes sixty-one songs, mostly polkas and waltzes. The songs themselves are beloved heirlooms ranging from ceremonial music with origins in Moravian wedding traditions to exuberant polkas celebrating the pleasures of life. For each song, the book provides music notation and Czech lyrics with English translation. An essay explores the song’s European roots, its American evolution, and the meaning of its lyrics and lists notable performances and recordings. In addition to the songs and essays, Frances Barton provides a chapter on the role of music in the Texas Czech ethnic community, and John K. Novak surveys Czech folk and popular music in its European home. The book both documents a specific musical inheritance and serves as a handbook for learning about a culture through its songs. As folklorist and polka historian James P. Leary writes in his foreword, “Barton and Novak take us on a poetic, historical, and ethnographic excursion deep into a community’s expressive heartland. Their Czech Songs in Texas just might be the finest extant annotated anthology of any American immigrant/ethnic group's regional song tradition.”

A wonderful collection of 22 bohemian folk songs originally composed by Vincent Pisek. Classic Folk Music Collection constitutes an extensive library of the most well-known and universally-enjoyed works of folk music ever composed, reproduced from authoritative editions for the enjoyment of musicians and music students the world over.

This book juxtaposes national anthems of thirteen countries from central Europe, with the aim of initiating a dialogue among the peoples of East-Central Europe. We tend to perceive a national anthem as a particular mirror, involuntarily reflecting an image of nation and homeland; but how does it represent the community for whom it sounds? To answer this question, the book deploys a comparative approach – anthems are presented in the light of those of neighbouring countries, with the conviction that one of the key features of true Europeanness is good relations between neighbours. The development trajectory of the modern nation is the context in which the book examines the history of such national symbols, alongside the symbolic content of poetry, images of the homeland and nation depicted in the anthems, as well as the sometimes longer processes which led to the adoption and legal codification of current state symbols. The Anthems of East-Central Europe will be a great resource for researchers, journalists, college and university students, politicians trying to impact emigrees from this region and emigrees themselves.