Andriy Zayarnyuk, Associate Professor at the University of Winnipeg, has written more than a history of a train terminal. The book is a history of L΄viv through the lens of its main train station. It tells the story of those who built it and were responsible for running it but also introduces the reader to those who worked there and those who left or arrived at the station. Most regular travelers and workers belonged to the three main ethnic groups living in the city: Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, or, after the Second World War, Ukrainians and Russians, but there were also always travelers who came to the city as visitors, traders, to study there, or as its occupiers. The book combines economic, political, social, and cultural history with currently fashionable spatial history and analyzes how different political regimes shaped and imposed their symbols on public space.

The book is chronologically structured. Its nine chapters cover the history of L΄viv from the acquisition of the city by Austria in 1772 to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. In a coda, Zayarnyuk gives a short overview of the developments that occurred after Ukrainian independence and reflects on Ukrainian identity and the reinterpretation of history. After a short introduction, the book starts with an overview of the history of L΄viv from the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century. Chapter 1 also reports on the building of the first terminal in 1861 and the first railway lines. The second chapter tells the story of the construction and design (neo-Baroque) of the main terminal, its opening in 1904, and explains the Austrian and Galician symbolism of its architectural features. The third chapter analyzes the creation of new structures, the expansion of the railway system, and the place of the station in the city. The fourth chapter is dedicated to wartime events. Between 1914 and 1919, L΄viv changed hands four times and saw periods of Austrian, Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish control. During every regime change, there was chaos at the station when troops and officials were evacuated, and as scores of inhabitants tried to escape. In the interwar period, L΄viv was part of the Second Polish Republic (Chapter 5). Then, for almost two years, it came under Soviet control before Nazi Germany occupied the city and murdered its Jewish population (Chapter 6). In August 1944, the Soviet Army returned and for forty-five years the city was part of the Soviet Union (Chapters 7–9). Since 1991, L΄viv has been a city in independent Ukraine.

This book is about modernization, the creation of a modern urban infrastructure, and modern lines of communication. Every time L΄viv changed hands, the terminal had to be integrated into the communication infrastructure of the state it now belonged to.

One of the most interesting parts of the book is Zayarnyuk's analysis of the railway workers’ milieu before the First World War. He noted that class mattered more than ethnicity in this group, which demonstrates the limits of processes of national mobilization. However, in the interwar period, ethnic tensions increased as a result of the nationalizing efforts of the Polish state and the terrorist actions of a militant subgroup of Ukrainian nationalists. During the first Soviet occupation, a process of Sovietization and Ukrainization began, which also affected the terminal. Zayarnyuk points to the paradox whereby the previously strong solidarity and bargaining power of the railway workers was undermined in a state that called itself the state of workers and peasants.

During the Second World War, the station played an important role as a transportation hub for Soviet mass deportations and the Nazi genocide of the Jewish population, with trains transporting Jewish victims to the death camps. After the war, the Polish population was forced to leave the city. This also meant that the mostly Polish workforce on the railway was replaced by Ukrainian and Russian workers. Throughout the Soviet period, the station was crippled by financial problems that delayed but did not prevent its expansion and modernization. Attempts to make it profitable failed, but new ticket sale machines were introduced, and a train control system was established.

The availability and accessibility of sources determined the content covered. For the Soviet period Zayarnyuk writes a lot about modernization, not so much about the life of workers and travelers, but this does not take anything away from the book. It is an excellent, well-written, and well-researched monograph. Railway enthusiasts will find it enthralling but it is also a very good introduction to the spatial, cultural, and social history of this fascinating city.