SPOTLIGHT

The Emperor and the Peasant: Two Men at the Start of the Great War and the End of the Habsburg Empire

Kenneth Janda

Mcfarland & Company Inc.

From the Author: There was more to World War I than the Western Front. This history, presented as two intertwined narratives in alternating chapters, juxtaposes the experiences of a monarch and a peasant on the Eastern Front. Franz Joseph I, emperor of Austria-Hungary, was the first European leader to declare war in 1914 and the first to commence firing. Samuel Mozolak was a Slovak laborer who sailed to New York before being drafted into the army and killed in combat. The author interprets Franz Joseph’s view of the war from the perspective of the emperor and his contemporaries, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicolas II. Mozolak’s story depicts the life of a peasant conscript in an army staffed by aristocratic officers, and illustrates the pattern of East European immigration to America. Both stories are enlivened with references to the art and culture of the period.

Kenneth Janda is Payson S. Wild Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Northwestern University.

SPOTLIGHT

Aftershocks: Great Powers and Domestic Reforms in the 20th Century

Seva Gunitsky

Princeton University Press

From the Publisher: Over the past century, democracy spread around the world in turbulent bursts of change, sweeping across national borders in dramatic cascades of revolution and reform. Aftershocks is the first book to offer a detailed explanation for this wavelike spread and retreat—not only of democracy but also of its twentieth-century rivals, fascism and communism. Seva Gunitsky argues that waves of regime change are driven by the aftermath of cataclysmic disruptions to the international system. These hegemonic shocks, marked by the sudden rise and fall of great powers, have been essential and often-neglected drivers of domestic transformations. The evolution of modern regimes cannot be fully understood without examining the consequences of clashes between great powers, which repeatedly—and often unsuccessfully—sought to cajole, inspire, and intimidate other states into joining their camps.

Seva Gunitsky is assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto.

Keep PS Informed

Let us know about your new book! Visit the PS page at www.apsanet.org/ps and click on the “Books by Our Readers” link in the sidebar. E-mail Drew Meadows with any questions at dmeadows@apsanet.org. We look forward to sharing your book with our readers.