Customer Reviews

The History of Eastern Europe for Beginners (Writers and Readers)

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Aside from the pro-Socialist slant already mentioned by several reviewers, it is a book riddled with factual errors (the Letts and Moldavians are Slavs? Tito was a Serb? Why does the map outline of 1795 Partitioned Poland-Lithuania only show half of the country?) and fails in its basic premise of providing an outline of Eastern European history. Regardless of one's politics, their approach is ahistorical, with odd strings of facts displayed without context or explanation, rather like a book of trivia. Other books from this "...for Beginners" series have been far better organized and done a much better job of explaining their subject than this book does. Its half-baked organization, poorly-disguised ideological partisanship and quite stark plethora of factual innaccuracies and errors is all better understood when one looks at the bibliography: a book on flags, a U.S. government collection of global statistics and a couple other similar "references" that would get a standard high school research paper returned for lack of effort. These guys obviously didn't do much research.

It's sad because this field desperately needs a good introductory guide for laymen, but this book isn't it. This is a case where something is not better than nothing.

This is a great quick read that covers a lot of detail and history in a humorous and easy way. It's a good beginning point to learn the complex history of Eastern Europe.

While the book was helpful in learning basic geography of eastern Europe and had many humorous comments, I had a hard time getting past the blatant sympathy for communism. The section on the Soviet Union, for example, described the "widespread discontent" brought about by Stalin's collectivization of agriculture. A cartoon showed a sad farmer wearing a barrel with little straps. There was no mention of the tens of millions who died as a result of the intentional destruction of their seed grain, nor any mention of the purges or slave labor camps. The authors implied that while communism was "unpopular", capitalism produces "unemployment, homelessness and destitution".

America was described as an empire exactly analagous to the Soviet Union and it's puppet states.

The authors did concede that Joe Stalin had corrupted the idealistic dream of Marx and Lenin.

This book simply explains in a entertaining way the History of Eastern Europe. Mr. Beck's drawings are wonderful. The writing of Mr. Mast is clearing written and understood. I highly recommend this book to all those interested in understanding europian history.

OK, I know this isn't the most in-depth and accurate book on Eastern Europe (nobody claimed it was textbook level), but it is a good overview for someone who is interested in the basics. I was given a copy due to my job (all I can say is I work for the government), and I found many interesting tidbits in it that I didn't know. I have traveled and lived throughout the region, and wish I had found this book years ago as it would be helpful for those not familiar with its history. And please don't criticize any events or issues that may have been left out, all written history has its shortcomings and inaccuracies! Overall, this book does a grand job and showing how Eastern Europe got to its present state!

As with nearly all the books in the "for beginners" series, anyone who knows anything about the topic will find the book not only incomplete (to be expected), but hopelessly skewed in a left-wing direction. Communism is never completely revealed as the horribly crushing, oppressive system it was. Although there is little mention of the millions who died under Stalin's rule, there is a page on the positive side (!) of Stalinism. There is no differentiation between the democratic West and the communist East with both being accused of simply wanting to divide up Europe. Most citizens of Poland, for example, would find such a perspective appalling. World War II merits around a page with no mention of the Holocaust or the extermination of European Jewry. Indeed, Jews rate one mention in passing in the whole book. This fits in with the bias of the series. In other books, Jews are usually mentioned negatively (with the notable exception of anti-Israel Noam Chomsky) and the hate for Zionism is so overdone that it moves into anti-Semitic with even widely recognized moderate figures (e.g. Chaim Weizmann) attacked as extreme.