History, Politics and Society
As well as the more specific titles below, there are quite a number of books on the changes of 1989 across Eastern Europe, well worth dipping into if you're travelling around the region. Two of the best are Misha Glenny's The Rebirth of History (Penguin) and Timothy Garton-Ash's History of the Present (Penguin), both of which have very readable chapters on Hungary post 1989. Judit Frigyesi Bela Bartok and Turn-of-the-century Budapest (University of California Press). Placing Bartok in his cultural milieu, this is an excellent account of the Hungarian intellectual world at the beginning of the century. Andras Gero Modern Hungarian Society in the Making: The Unfinished Experience (Central European UP, Hungary). A good collection of essays setting Hungary in the context of the Eastern European environment. Jorg K Hoensch A History of Modern Hungary 1867-1994 (Longman/Addison-Wesley). A good history of the country on its way from tragedy to tragedy, but with a happy(ish) outcome. Laszlo Kontler Millenium in Central Europe: A History of Hungary (Atlantisz). Another very thorough and reliable history of the country, although it's slightly archaic wording lets it down somewhat. Bill Lomax Hungary 1956 (Allison & Busby/St Martin's Press o/p). Still probably the best - and shortest - book on the Uprising, by an acknowledged expert on modern Hungary. Lomax also edited Eyewitness in Hungary (Spokesman, UK), an anthology of accounts by foreign Communists (most of whom were sympathetic to the Uprising) that vividly depicts the elation, confusion and tragedy of the events of October 1956. John Lukacs Budapest 1900 (Weidenfeld/ Grove Press). Excellent and very readable account of the politics and society of Budapest at the turn of the century, during a golden age that was shortly to come to an end. George Mikes A Study in Infamy (Andre Deusch o/p). Better known in the West for his humorous writings, Mikes here exposes the activities of the secret police during the Rakosi era. Based on captured documents which explain their methods of surveillance and use of terror as a political weapon. Miklos Molnar A Concise History of Hungary (Cambridge UP). Comprehensive thousand-year history of Hungarian land, people, culture and economy, right up until the 1998 elections. John Paget Hungary and Transylvania (Ayer, US). Paget's massive book, published in 1971, attempted to explain nineteenth-century Hungary to the English middle class, and, within its aristocratic limitations, succeeded. Michael Stewart The Time of the Gypsies (Westview Press). Based on anthropological research in a gypsy community in Hungary, this superb book presents Gypsy culture as a culture, and not as a parasitic body on society, as it is widely perceived in Hungary and elsewhere. Peter Sugar (ed) A History of Hungary (L B Tauris). A useful, not too academic, survey of Hungarian history from pre-Conquest times to the close of the Kadar era, with a brief epilogue on the transition to democracy. Rudolf L. Tokes Hungary's Negotiated Revolution: Economic Reform, Social Change, and Political Succession, 1957-1990 (Cambridge UP). Very sound and comprehensive account of the Communist regime's survival, decline and fall.
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