Return to Diversity

Written by one of the world's foremost authorities on East Central Europe,Return to Diversity has proven to be an invaluable guide to students of modern European history and politics. The addition of co-author Nancy M. Wingfield on the current third edition brought the expertise of another leading scholar to the book, with updates and a fully revised suggested reading list to reflect the most recent scholarship in the field. An engaging and straightforward political narrative, the book is organized chronologically, in a country-by-country format that makes information easily accessible to students. Each section features comments summarizing and examining the most important themes of Eastern Europe during the rise and fall of Communism. There are balanced discussions of every relevant political affair, as well as detailed analysis of the causes and consequences of Communism from the perspective of post-Communist regimes. The new edition will move to a larger trim size. Already heralded for its sound political scholarship, the fourth edition of RtD will now include more on how society and culture influenced the political events it discusses. There is an overall consensus praising RtD as one of the best if not the best textbook on political history on the market, and the fourth edition will continue in this tradition. The new edition will move to a larger trim size. Already heralded for its sound political scholarship, the fourth edition of RtD will now include more on how society and culture influenced the political events it discusses. There is an overall consensus praising RtD as one of the best if not the best textbook on political history on the market, and the fourth edition will continue in this tradition

The late Joseph Rothschild served as Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science and Associate of the Institute on East Central Europe at Columbia University. His books include Ethnopolitics: A Conceptual Framework (1981), East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars (1974), Pilsudski's Coup d'État (1966), and The Communist Party of Bulgaria (1959. Nancy M. Wingfield is Professor of History at Northern Illinois University. She is author of Flag Wars and Stone Saints: How the Bohemian Lands Became Czech (forthcoming in 2007); editor of Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe (2003); and coeditor, with Maria Bucur, of Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (2006) and Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present (2001).