Eastern Europe!

Jankowski, Tomek. Eastern Europe!: Everything You Need to Know About the History, People, and Places of a Region That Shaped Our World and Still Does. Williamstown, MA: Steerforth Press, New Europe Books, 2013.


This is a highly readable history of Eastern Europe from medieval times to near the present-day. The author has done an incredible amount of research and provides the reader a look of the region as a whole and by country within that region for several periods of history. I read an e-galley version of this book on my Kindle, and there were formatting issues present in the book. Severalsentenceswereruntogetherlikethis -- often for 1.5 lines or so, making it difficult to read. There was text that was in languages other than English, but it was always translated later. One of my biggest issues with reading non-fiction in electronic book format is that end notes are not very accessible. Such was the case here. I have sometimes seen publishers who provide hyperlinks in the text to the end notes, but this one, at least in its e-galley format, did not do so. The author did insert humor into his narrative from time to time. I found his comment regarding bibliographies (with the bibliography) entertaining. The book is well-indexed. Of course, it is almost impossible to use that index in the electronic version of the book without additional formatting which was not present in the e-galley. This review is based on an e-galley provided by the publisher through NetGalley with the expectation that a review would be written.