Prague and Czechia: History from the Heart of Europe

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6 books

Below are some of my favorite books about Czechia and its beautiful capital city, Prague. Situated in the middle of Europe, Czechia’s dramatic history, while filled with surprising twists and turns, provides a dramatic, small-country perspective on European history. Shortly after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, I took a job as an English teacher in Czechia. I now teach European history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I specialize in Czech and Bohemian history. Each book below captures a different aspect of the country’s past and is a great read to boot.

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A Boy's Journey

From Nazi-Occupied Prague to Freedom in America

Peter J. Stein, 2019

I first met Peter here in Chapel Hill, and we became fast friends. A Holocaust survivor from Prague, Peter often spoke to my classes about his experiences. What made his talks so powerful was his ability to remember what it was like to be an eight-year-old boy living in a city under Nazi occupation and to tell a story that is humbling, moving, and real. Never have I seen a speaker connect better with young people. Peter first became inspired to begin telling his story to students and others after confronting a Holocaust denier, and his many presentations laid the foundation for this book. Part history, part memoir, A Boy’s Journey is also a story about family and the need for tolerance and empathy in our world today.

Prague Panoramas

National Memory and Sacred Space in the Twentieth Century

Cynthia Paces, 2009

For years, I used to walk past the statues of St. Wenceslaus, František Palacký, and other Czech national heroes without giving them much thought. After reading this book, I came to appreciate how much Prague’s monuments can tell us about the city’s history. Their creators offered a variety of interpretations over the meaning of “Czechness”, and these monuments have inspired passionate debates about nationhood and religion ever since. The book also made me think about ways that monuments can exclude others and inspire hatred, and not just in Prague. Consider, for example, statues celebrating the Confederacy erected by white supremacists decades after the end of the Civil War. Many still dot my part of the country.

Spartakiads

The Politics of Physical Culture in Communist Czechoslovakia

Petr Roubal, 2020

Under Communism, two hundred thousand spectators gathered every five years to fill the largest concrete stadium in the world, Strahov Stadium, on a hill not far from Prague Castle. Why? To watch tens of thousands of their fellow countrymen perform synchronized gymnastics movements. Why? They were all taking part in a ritual, called the Spartakiad, which tells us much about Communist ideology as it evolved over time. For many participants and spectators, the Spartakiad was also an opportunity to visit their capital city and return with memories that were not part of the Communists’ ideological script. In Roubal’s telling, the Spartakiad also shows that Czechoslovak citizens were not simply cogs in a totalitarian machine. In 1960, for example, performers staying in Prague dormitories forced organizers to remove high-calorie butter cakes with cheese curd. They got beef goulash instead.

Prague

Belonging in the Modern City

Chad Bryant, 2021

My book is a history of Prague, one of Europe’s great cities, as told from the point of view of five “outsiders”: an aspiring guidebook writer, a German-speaking newspaperman, a Bolshevik carpenter, an actress of mixed heritage who came of age during the Communist terror, and a Czech-speaking Vietnamese blogger. None of them is famous, but their lives are revealing. In addition to providing unique perspectives on the city’s past, they challenge us to ask some deceptively simple questions. How have people created for themselves a sense of belonging in the face of discrimination and political persecution? What does it mean to belong somewhere, and what might the search for belonging tell us about city life and our modern world?

Under a Cruel Star

A Life in Prague 1941-1968

Heda Kovály, 2012

Of all of the books that my students have read over the years, this has consistently been their favorite. Heartbreaking yet inspiring, this memoir tells the story of Heda Margolius Kovaly, who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp to return to Prague in 1945. Her husband, Rudolf, joined the Communist Party and, after the Communist coup of 1948, worked in the Ministry of Trade. In 1952, he was executed following a show trial that accused him and thirteen others of participating in a Zionist conspiracy to destroy Czechoslovakia. Kovaly wrote the memoir after emigrating to the US in 1968. The book captures the allure of Communism and the cruelties that it inflicted on many, all the while telling a remarkable story of survival.

Women of Prague

Ethnic Diversity and Social Change from the Eighteenth Century to the Present

Wilma Iggers, 1995

Women rarely feature as central figures in most works about Prague. In this book, Iggers introduces us to an array of fascinating female writers, activists, powerful ladies of society, and survivors who have lived in Prague and its environs over the past two hundred years. Each chapter includes a brief introduction and excerpts from these women’s writings, such as diaries, letters, and newspaper articles. The reader can thus hear these women’s voices and feel transported to a different moment in history. Some entries are hard to read, such as Milada Horáková’s farewell letter to her teenage daughter, written on June 23, 1950. The lead defendant in Communist Czechoslovakia’s first public show trial, Horáková, was executed three days later. Wilma Iggers is a Czechoslovak native who escaped to Canada after the Nazis invaded her country in 1938, which only enhances the perspectives that she brings to these women’s lives.