The Czech Republic is a red-hot European destination, and the charms of Slovakia are slowly being discovered by Westerners as well. The two countries share fundamental similarities in language and culture, but they never really managed to create a common national Czechoslovak identity, after being merged in 1918 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed. With the lifting of the Iron Curtain in 1989 through the Velvet Revolution and the final breakup of Czechoslovakia in to two countries in 1993, this up-to-date, substantive insight is much needed. This volume overviews the current social,...

A keen observer of culture, Czech writer Vladimir 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...

Based on the real-life story of Bauhaus artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Aaron's Leap is framed by the lens of a twenty first-century Israeli film crew delving into the extraordinary life of a woman who taught art to children in the Nazi transport camp of Terezin and died in Auschwitz. Aided by the granddaughter of one of the artist's pupils,...