"Professor Kirschbaum offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date history of Slovakia, from its arrival on the Danubian Plain to the present. While paying tribute to Slovakia's resilience and struggle for survival he describes its contribution 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. The final chapter examines the vagaries of Slovak post Communist politics that led to Slovakia's membership in NATO and the European Union."--BOOK JACKET.

Includes maps of: Slovak Republic of 1993; Great Moravian Empire; Slovak Countries in Hungary; First Czechoslovak Republic, 1918-1938; Slovak Republic of 1939.

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 1918-1938 -- The Slovak Republic 1939-1945 -- The Uprising of 1944 -- Communism and Federalism -- Democracy and Independence -- The Return to Europe.