Another Hungary tells the stories of eight remarkable individuals: an
aristocrat, merchant, engineer, teacher, journalist, rabbi, tobacconist,
and writer. All eight came from the same woebegone corner of prewar
Hungary. Their biographies illuminate how the region's residents made
sense of economic underdevelopment, ethnic diversity, and relations
between Christians and Jews. Taken together, their stories create a
unique picture of the troubled history of Eastern Europe, viewed not
from the capital cities, but from the small towns and villages.
Through these eight lives, Another Hungary investigates the wider
processes that remade Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century. It asks:
How did people make sense of the dramatic changes, from the advent of
the railroad to the outbreak of the First World War? How did they
respond to the army of political ideologies that marched through this
region: liberalism, socialism, nationalism, antisemitism, and Zionism?
To what extent did people in the provinces not just react to, but
influence what was happening in the centers of political power? This
collective biography confirms that nineteenth-century Hungary was no
earthly paradise. But it also shows that the provinces produced men and
women with bold ideas on how to change their world.