With superb photography, illustrations and maps, this easy-to-use travel guide will lead you straight to all that these fascinating countries have to offer. DK Eyewitness Travel Guide Czech and Slovak Republics showcases everything from what to do in Prague - such as visiting St Vitus's Cathedral and walking along Charles Bridge - to the Czech Republic's picturesque towns and magnificent scenery, including the stunning Šumava National Park. In the Slovak Republic, discover the best things to do in Bratislava before exploring the country's diverse topography, from the lowlands in the west to the Tatras mountains in the north. Visit Slovakia's oldest towns, such as Trnava and Banská Bystrica, and marvel at the turreted Bojnice Castle. With hotel and restaurant recommendations and insider tips, this guide will help you plan the perfect trip.

The Czech and Slovak Experience assembles essays by leading specialists from the USA, Canada, Britain and Czechoslovakia on key aspects of modern Czech and Slovak history: Joseph II's contribution to the development of the Czech national movement, the troubled relationship between Czechs and Slovaks as seen through Czech and Slovak eyes, Slovak linguistic separatism, the emergence of political democracy in post-Versailles Czechoslovakia, Masaryk as a religious heretic, Czechoslovakia's Germans and their treatment by the Czechoslovak government, and Prague's Jewish community after 1918.

Bohemia and Moravia, today part of the Czech Republic, was the first territory with a majority of non-German speakers occupied by Hitler’s Third Reich on the eve of the World War II. Tens of thousands of Jewish inhabitants in the so called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia soon felt the tragic consequences of Nazi racial politics. Not all Czechs, however, remained passive bystanders during the genocide. After the destruction of Czechoslovakia in 1938-39, Slovakia became a formally independent but fully subordinate satellite of Germany. Despite the fact it was not occupied until 1944, Slovakia paid Germany to deport its own Jewish citizens to extermination camps. About 270,000 out of the 360,000 Czech and Slovak casualties of World War II were victims of the Holocaust. Despite these statistics, the Holocaust vanished almost entirely from post-war Czechoslovak, and later Czech and Slovak, historical cultures. The communist dictatorship carried the main responsibility for this disappearance, yet the situation has not changed much since the fall of the communist regime. The main questions of this study are how and why the Holocaust was excluded from the Czech and Slovak history.

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.

National & Regional Cuisine.

When traumatic historical events and transformations coincide with one's entry into young adulthood, the personal and historical significance of life-course transitions interact and intensify. In this volume, Alena Heitlinger examines identity formation among a generation of Czech and Slovak Jews who grew up under communism, coming of age during the de-Stalinization period of 1962-1968. Heitlinger's main focus is on the differences and similarities within and between generations, and on the changing historical and political circumstances of state socialism/communism that have shaped an individual's consciousness and identity—as a Jew, assimilated Czech, Slovak, Czechoslovak and, where relevant, as an emigre or an immigrant. The book addresses a larger set of questions about the formation of Jewish identity in the midst of political upheavals, secularization, assimilation, and modernity: Who is a Jew? How is Jewish identity defined? How does Jewish identity change based on different historical contexts? How is Jewish identity transmitted from one generation to the next? What do the Czech and Slovak cases tell us about similar experiences in other former communist countries, or in established liberal democracies? Heitlinger explores the official and unofficial transmission of Holocaust remembering (and non-remembering), the role of Jewish youth groups, attitudes toward Israel and Zionism, and the impact of the collapse of communism. This volume is rich in both statistical and archival data and in its analysis of historical, institutional, and social factors. Heitlinger's wide-ranging approach shows how history, generational, and individual biography intertwine in the formation of ethnic identity and its ambiguities.

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This clear, objective introduction to the politics of Czechoslovakia and the successor Czech and Slovak Republics provides a comprehensive analysis of Czechoslovakia in the postcommunist period. Carol Leff builds a framework for understanding the dynamics of the "triple transition": democratization, marketization, and a national transformation that has reconfigured the dynamic between state and nation. She shows how the interaction of these three transformational agendas has shaped Czechoslovakia's development, ultimately culminating in the paradoxical disintegration of a state that most of its citizens wished to preserve. The book offers a valuable case study of a country coming back to Europe, but it also provides an opportunity for analyzing the influence of communism on what had been a significant interwar European state. The book's strong comparative element will make it invaluable as well for those seeking to understand contemporary Central and Eastern Europe.

In this social and cultural history of Czechoslovakia’s “gentle revolution,” James Krapfl shifts the focus away from elites to ordinary citizens who endeavored—from the outbreak of revolution in 1989 to the demise of the Czechoslovak federation in 1992—to establish a new, democratic political culture. Unique in its balanced coverage of developments in both Czech and Slovak lands, including the Hungarian minority of southern Slovakia, this book looks beyond Prague and Bratislava to collective action in small towns, provincial factories, and collective farms. Through his broad and deep analysis of workers’ declarations, student bulletins, newspapers, film footage, and the proceedings of local administrative bodies, Krapfl contends that Czechoslovaks rejected Communism not because it was socialist, but because it was arbitrarily bureaucratic and inhumane. The restoration of a basic “humanness”—in politics and in daily relations among citizens—was the central goal of the revolution. In the strikes and demonstrations that began in the last weeks of 1989, Krapfl argues, citizens forged new symbols and a new symbolic system to reflect the humane, democratic, and nonviolent community they sought to create. Tracing the course of the revolution from early, idealistic euphoria through turns to radicalism and ultimately subversive reaction, Revolution with a Human Face finds in Czechoslovakia’s experiences lessons of both inspiration and caution for people in other countries striving to democratize their governments.

Examines the key themes and traditions of Czech and Slovak cinema, linking inter-war and post-war cinemas together with developments in the post-Communist period.