Sayer describes how Bohemia's ambiguities and contradictions are those of Europe itself, and he considers the ironies of viewing Europe, the West and modernity from the vantage point of a country that has been too often ignored. It draws on literary, musical, visual and documentary sources, ranging from banknotes to statues, museum displays to school textbooks, funeral orations to operatic stage-sets, murals in subway stations to censors' indexes of banned books. It brings us into contact with the ever changing details of daily life - the street names and facades of buildings, the heroes figured on postage stamps - that have created and recreated a sense of what it is to be Czech.

From the Author
Other reviews of The Coasts of Bohemia
From The Financial Times (London):...Derek Sayer's book, a history of the Czechs since their conversion to Christianity in the ninth century, serves as a thoroughly effective rebuttal to Engels and a stern post factum rebuke to Chamberlain. Written rather more from a cultural than a political perspective, the book notes that the greatest ever Czech reference work, a 28-volume encyclopedia published between 1888 and 1909, was second in its day, in terms of numbers of entries and illustrations, only to the Encyclopedia Britannica...As Sayer illustrates, and as Engels and Chamberlain should have known, the Czechs were responsible for constructing one of Europe's most advanced medieval polities. permanent integration into the western world.. But the temptation should be resisted to portray the Czech past as one long national pilgrimage from Jan Hus to Vaclav Havel. If history were that simple, there would be no need for books as discerning and thought-provoking as Sayer's. (Tony Barber, "The language of national identity denied," March 28, 1998)

From Publishers Weekly:...Sayer doesn't fall into the many traps awaiting cultural histories: he weaves individuals into the larger story, doesn't give in to nationalistic boosterism and doesn't make the messy unnecessarily clean. In readable but never condescending prose, Sayer tries to balance the multiplicity of art forms (although the performing arts do take second place to literature and the visual arts) to show how the Czechs constructed their identity...Lively and intelligent, it will appeal to the legions of Americans visiting (or settling in) Prague, as well as to anyone who wants to know about the culture that nurtured Kafka, Smetana, Karel Capek, Alfons Mucha, Josef Skvorecky, Dvorak and others. (Starred review, April 1998).

From Novy Domov (Czech newspaper, Toronto):

Autor je cesky profesor sociologie na University of Alberta v Edmontonu. Na temer 450 strankach zajimave podava dulezite useky z historie ceskeho naroda--od sv. Vaclava po Bilou horu, tristaletou porobu, obrozeni a rozkvet ceskeho pisemnictvi 19. a 20. stoleti. Je to idealni zdroj pouceni o nasich dejinach pro Cechy i cechofily ctouci anglicky. Kniha se setkala s velice priznivym kritickym ohlasem. (Zdena Salivarova, 6. June 1998)

Translation: The author is a Czech professor of sociology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Over almost 450 pages he engagingly presents important junctures from the history of the Czech nation--from Saint Vaclav through the White Mountain, the three hundred years of subjugation, the [national] revival and the flowering of Czech literature in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is an ideal source of knowledge about our history for Czechs as well as for English-speaking Czechophiles. The book has met with a very favorable critical response.

Mockrat dekuji pani Salivarove za recenzi, a take za poklonu -- ale Cech rozhodne nejsem! Svoji cestinu si neustale zdokonaluji. Jsem Anglican, zijici v Kanade v poslednich letech. Mam ale ceskou manzelku, Alenu, ktera prelozila vsechno z cestiny v knize, a bez ktere bych nemohl takovou knihu napsat vubec.