This classic book offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date history of Slovakia, from its establishment on the Danubian Plain to the present. While paying tribute to Slovakia's resilience and struggle for survival, it describes contributions to European civilization in the Middle Ages; the development of Slovak consciousness in response to Magyarization; its struggle for autonomy in Czechoslovakia after the Treaty of Versailles; its resistance, as the first Slovak Republic, to a Nazi-controlled Europe; its reaction to Communism; and the path that led to the creation of the second Slovak Republic. Now fully updated to the present day, the book examines the vagaries of Slovak post-Communist politics that led to Slovakia's membership in NATO and the European Union.

Stanislav J. Kirschbaum is Professor of International Studies at York University, Glendon College, author of Historical Dictionary of Slovakia, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He lives in Toronto.

Introduction * The Land and Its People * The First State * The Middle Ages * The Habsburg Empire * The National Awakening * The Politics of Survival * The Struggle for Nationhood * The First Czechoslovak Republic 1918*38 * The Slovak Republic 1939*45 * The Uprising of 1944 * Communism and Federalism * Democracy and Independence * The Return to Europe