Eastern Europe

The KGB is one of the most famous abbreviations of the 20th century, and it has become synonymous with the shadowy and often violent actions of the Soviet Union’s secret police and internal security agencies. Aside from the KGB, the 20th century’s most notorious spy agency was the Stasi, which was instrumental in the history of East Germany. In an era of totalitarian countries dominated by repressive state agencies, the Stasi stood out for its size, and the sheer breadth and depth of its surveillance.

Croatia, the Mediterranean country on the Mediterranean Sea, with wonderful coasts and more than a thousand islands... The ancient buildings and Venetian cities are a treasure trove of culture and Architecture. Zagreb, Veliki Tabor, Umag, Porec, Rovinj, Pula, Opatija, Rijeka, Plitzwitzer Seen, Zadar, Kornati, Krka, Sibenik, Trogir, Split, Salona, Omis, Korcula, Dubrovnik Zagreb is the cultural heart and a lovely capital with an extraordinary atmosphere, because the upper town is still a treasure trove of the past.

Here is a brand new second edition that has been fully updated. The author is a long-time resident of Budapest, who knows the region intimately and takes us behind the scenes to discover its best features the sights, the places to stay and eat, the shopping, and all the activities. Millions of people every year hike into, bike, drive, or climb into the green valleys and limestone mountain ridges of Hungary s national parks and the hills.

Written as part of a US Army program instigated after World War II by Colonel S. L. A. Marshall of the Army Historical Division, who was convinced that no record of the war could be complete without the input of the German commanding officers and their main staff officers, these reports offer an invaluable record of German operations for historians and general audiences.

Greater Than a Tourist - Gothenburg Sweden, by Christina De Paris, offers the inside scoop on Gothenburg. This audiobook will give you travel tips from someone who has lived at your next travel destination.

No longer war, but not yet peace. A fascinating journey through 12 months of fear, hope, euphoria, and disappointment. A journalistic story about the most dramatic year of the 20th century. Grzebałkowska examines the fate of the last living witnesses of that time. She gives voices to the victims, but also the oppressors, especially when she can use them to show the post-war blending of roles and fates. 1945: War and Peace won the 2016 Nike Literary Audience Award.

Traveling in Europe in August 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, David Kurtz, the author’s grandfather, captured three minutes of ordinary life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in Poland on 16 mm Kodachrome color film. More than seventy years later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of home-movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community - an entire culture - that was annihilated in the Holocaust.

1670, Kyiv. A German convert to Russian Orthodoxy is writing history. Not merely a book about history: he believes that his work will save his beloved Kyiv from the scourge of Catholicism. Innokenty Gizel has never been to Moscow, but he wants to create the illusion that Kyiv shares a common history with the seat of the Orthodox Church. The story he comes up with - a fantasy - pleases Moscow's rulers so much that it will remain their official line all the way into the 21st century.

With travel tips and culture in our guidebooks written by a local, it is never too late to visit Santorini. Greater Than a Tourist- Santorini, Cyclades, Greece by Author Vivi Gialou offers first-hand and personal insight into the best ways to visit Santorini island. Most travel books tell you how to travel like a tourist. Although there is nothing wrong with that, as part of the Greater Than a Tourist series, this book will give you candid travel tips from someone who has lived at your next travel destination.

In 2009 musician Franz Nicolay left his job in the Hold Steady, aka the world's greatest bar band. Over the next five years, he crossed the world with a guitar in one hand, a banjo in the other, and an accordion on his back, playing the anarcho-leftist squats and DIY spaces of the punk rock diaspora. He met Polish artists nostalgic for their revolutionary days, Mongolian neo-Nazis in full SS regalia, and a gay expat in Ulaanbaatar who needed an armed escort between his home and his job.

Finally, the truth about vampires.Vampires are the most fearsome and fascinating of all creatures of folklore. For the first time, detailed accounts of the vampire and how its tradition developed in different cultures are gathered in one volume by eminent folklorist Alan Dundes.

A land of mountains, hills, and fertile plains, Romania is a tourist destination waiting to be discovered. It is a rich and complex country: a place whose cities are home to beautiful parks and vibrant cultural scenes and whose people welcome guests warmly into their homes, sharing the best of whatever they have and partying into the night, suffused by Latin joie de vivre. Buffeted over time between three great powers - the West, Russia, and Turkey - Romania betrays the cultural influences of each, and it can be a difficult place to get a handle on.

Travel Like a Local is a series of travel guidebooks written by local experts to help travelers explore new places like an insider. From learning about the culture and customs to finding the best restaurants and attractions, these guidebooks provide comprehensive information to ensure a hassle-free unforgettable journey. Each guidebook is packed with insider tips and recommendations, tailored specifically to the location, so you can make the most of your time and truly get to know the destination.

Can trauma be inherited? It is this question that sets Alex Halberstadt off on a quest to name and acknowledge a legacy of family trauma, and to end a century-old cycle of estrangement. As Halberstadt revisits the sites of his family’s formative traumas, he uncovers a multigenerational transmission of fear, suspicion, melancholy, and rage. And he comes to realize something more: Nations, like people, possess formative traumas that penetrate into the most private recesses of their citizens’ lives.

Greater Than a Tourist: East London, United Kingdom offers the inside scoop on East London. Most travel guides tell you how to travel like a tourist. As part of the Greater Than a Tourist series, this guide will give you travel tips from someone who has lived at your next travel destination. You will discover advice that will help you throughout your stay.

This is a true story of living and learning - being confused and comforted - with the excluded Ashkali people of Kosovo; an account of the challenges and delights of what happens when you find your community but it's a long way from home.

In 1949, a newly minted branch of the CIA (the precursor of today’s National Clandestine Service), flush with money and burning with determination to roll back the Iron Curtain, embarked on the first paramilitary operation in the history of the agency. They hatched an elaborate plan, coordinated with the British Secret Intelligence Service, to foment popular rebellion and detach Albania, the weakest of the Soviet satellites in Europe, from Moscow’s orbit. The operation resulted in dismal failure and was shut down by 1954.

These are the memoirs of the US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I, abridged for this production in order to focus on the mass deportations and systematic killings of Turkey's Armenian population. This work is a renowned primary source for this Armenian Genocide, a crime since recognized by 29 countries. Ambassador Morgenthau offers detailed profiles of the Turkish leaders with whom he interacts, finding that they are responsible for a "death warrant to a whole race".

Old Babushka, known throughout all of Moskva for her beautifully painted eggs, is preparing her eggs for the Easter Festival when she takes in an injured goose. She names the goose Rechenka, and they live happily together until one day when Rechenka accidentally overturns a basket, breaking all of Babushka's lovingly crafted eggs.

Fifty years after it was bombed to rubble, Berlin is once again a city in which Jews gather for the Passover Seder. Paris and Antwerp have recently emerged as important new centers of Jewish culture. Small but proud Jewish communities are revitalizing the ancient centers of Budapest, Prague, and Amsterdam. These brave, determined Jewish men and women have chosen to settle - or remain - in Europe after the devastation of the Holocaust, but they have paid a price.