On Central Europe

This is a solid, albeit awkward work. At times, Johnson will jump centuries forward before going back in time in order to make connections between the present and past. For example, his discussion of 16th century Bohemia culminates in an analysis of the (in)famous Svejk—the character of a 20th century Czech novel. This makes sense, as he argues that Central Europeans often look hundreds of years into the past to build a narrative for the present, but it is a strange writing choice for a history book.

I thought the early chapters, on medieval and early modern Central Europe, were really good—especially because I know little about them. However, the following two-thirds of the book spends too much time on “great power” politics, ignoring Bohemians, Slovaks, Croats, Slovenes, etc. in favor of internal tensions between Germans and Hungarians in the Habsburg Empire, as well as other disputes between Russia, the Habsburg Empire, and Germany before moving on to the twentieth century. This is a serious weakness, as the author built up the book in his introduction to be fundamentally about central Europeans as they lived on the ground, but he gets lost as the book goes on.

Nevertheless, this work is a solid primer on central European history. It is not detailed as it could be, but it also covers 1000+ years, so further reading is necessary to supplement this.