This volume is the outcome of the Eighth Annual Convention of the Centers for Austrian and Central European Studies, held in September 2014 in Minnesota (United States). As Reinhold Mitterlehner, Vice-Chancellor of Austria, mentions in his preface to the volume, the Austrian government decided in 2007 to help young scholars who focus on the cultural, political, and modern history of Central Europe “to establish themselves in the international scientific community” (7). To achieve that goal, members of the convention “bring together the best and most promising Ph.D. students conducting their research at the various Centers for Austrian and Central European Studies” (7). The two editors, a professor and doctoral student at the University of Vienna, organized the twelve studies of this volume, written by doctoral candidates from all over the world, in three sections.

As an introduction to the volume, Wakounig and Kühnel include a thirty-eight-page study by Professor Arnold Suppan, a well-known senior Austrian scholar, that was presented at the annual convention, titled “Hitler—Beneš—Tito: Conflict, War, and Genocide in East-Central and South-East Europe.” This study gives a broad survey on the troubled modern history of the region and offers an excellent introduction to the topic. Unfortunately, the editors also added the 2014–15 annual reports of eight Austrian and Central European Centers about their activities in Austria, Canada, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and the United States. This part of the volume, which fills forty-five pages, reflects the work of these centers, but certainly is not exciting for readers who are interested in research on the region.

The scholarly studies have an extremely broad scope, ranging from an analysis of Prague playwright Paul Kornfeld's Blanche oder das Atelier im Garten to the Austrian architect Hundertwasser. These broad spectrums of the studies are both the strength and weakness of the volume. It reflects well the work and interest of a new generation of scholars in the history, politics, and culture of Central Europe. Their studies are matured scholarly works. However, such diverse topics certainly cannot attract all readers. Readers may find studies with topics that interest them, but one certainly cannot be attracted by all the highly varied studies in the entire book.

All the studies connect with authors’ doctoral dissertations. One can congratulate them for their innovative approach to the region's history and culture. They have interesting findings, as in the case of Giovanni Matteo Quer's study about the tactical move of the Radical Right movements in Western Europe to drop open antisemitism from their political rhetoric and programs, even though their counterparts in Central Europe have still preserved this old characteristic. Open antisemitism is often replaced by anti-Israel politics, although Quer's study does not differentiate between hidden antisemitic-anti-Israel critics and the well-based rejection of Netanyahu's right-wing government's settlement policy and one-state solution plan. This latter rejection cannot be defined as antisemitic. Michal Wiᶏcek's study on the Polish émigré press sheds light on interesting and largely unknown post–World War II integration ideas and clearly demonstrates that discussions about the need of European federation was in the air of those years. Polish political thinkers recommended Polish-Czechoslovak federation and advocated a two-bloc federation, Northern as well as Southern Central and Eastern European (163). The study on the Carinthian graveyards by Ferdinand Kühnel presents an interesting episode on changing national identity based on the alterations of writings on gravestones. Replacing Slovenian spellings with German spellings of names (Kletz instead of Klec) or changing the Slovenian “počivaj v miru” to German “ruhet in Frieden” reflects the influence of state propaganda and shifting national identity. The author quotes Austrian philosopher Rudolf Burger's witty idea about the creation of national identity by using the terms of “Imagi-Nation” and “Indoctri-Nation” (202). Sebastian Sparwasser presents another interesting chapter, focusing on changing ethnic identity and the unknown story of about 10,000 ethnic Germans, out of the 180,000 expelled from Hungary after World War II, who were ready to take the risks and secretly moved back to Hungary. Ethnic Germans (svábok) lived in Hungary for centuries, and several of them developed the Heimat (homeland) feeling for the country and refused resettling in Germany. Colleen Bertsch also presents an interesting small episode of Florin Codoba, a Transylvanian Roma folk-violinist who had a double national identity as Romanian and Hungarian Roma. (In the latter case, he used the Hungarian spelling of his name, Kodoba.)

All in all, the volume, with its studies on extremely diverse subjects, offers several interesting lessons—often on esoteric, small, but nevertheless fascinating subjects—about Central Europe, its exciting history, and its national, ethnic, and identity problems.