Království střední Evropy - Nový pohled na dějiny středoevropského prostoru – Rady Martyn (2025)

Central Europe is not just a place on the map, but an area of shared experience: mutual borrowings, enforced compromises, and misunderstandings. In the Middle Ages, Central Europeans depicted their enemies as 'dog-headed men' – who later became the Turks, Swedes, Russians, and Soviets. All of them tore Central Europe apart and reshaped it according to their own visions. Even so, the region forged its own cohesive identity, and from the constant competition among the kingdoms of central Europe, cultural sparks repeatedly emerged – the area was the first home of the Renaissance outside Italy, the cradle of the Reformation, the starting point of the Enlightenment, symphonic music, and modern nationalism. The history of Central Europe, according to Martyn Rady, maps two thousand years of development, its creativity, turbulent changes, and shared cultural trends that make these countries so unique.
Martyn Rady is an emeritus professor of Central European history at University College London. He is the author of several books on the history of Hungary and Hungary from the Middle Ages to the present, but he has published on various other topics from Hussitism to vampirism to Emperor Charles V. His book 'The Habsburgs: Rise and Fall of a World Power' was published in Czech (Slovart, 2021).