This original collection offers an account of key moments and themes in the history of the Czech lands from the time of the rise of the Premyslide dynasty in the ninth century to the fall of socialism in 1989.

Introduction Mikulás Teich; 1. Boiohaemum - Cechy Jirí Sláma; 2. The making of the Czech state: Bohemia and Moravia from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries Jaroslav Mezník and Zdenek Merínsky; 3. Politics and culture under Charles IV Frantisek Kavka; 4. The Hussite movement: an anomaly of European history? Frantisek Smahel; 5. The monarchy of the estates Josef Macek; 6. Rudolfine culture Josef Válka; 7. The White Mountain as a symbol in modern Czech history Josef Petrán and Lydia Petránová; 8. The alchemy of happiness: the Enlightenment in the Moravian context Jirí Kroupa; 9. Problems and paradoxes of the national revival Vladimír Macura; 10. Czech society 1848–1918 Otto Urban; 11. The university professors and students in nineteenth-century Bohemia Jan Havránek; 12. Science in a bilingual country Irena Seidlerová; 13. The rise and fall of a democracy Robert Kvacek; 14. The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939–45): the economic dimension Alice Teichova; 15. Czechoslovakia behind the Iron Curtain (1945–89) Milan Otáhal; 16. Changes in identity: Germans in Bohemia and Moravia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Jan Kren; 17. Czechs and Jews Helena Krejcová 18. Czechs and Slovaks in modern history Dusan Kovác.