Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria

(Hardback, Third Edition)

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Bulgaria is a country of extraordinary beauty, with high, wild mountains and gentle valleys, and with picturesque cities and idyllic villages. Its bordered by Romania, Serbia Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, and the Black Sea. After many years of communist rule, Bulgaria adopted a democratic constitution and began the process of moving toward political democracy and a market economy while combating inflation, unemployment, corruption, and crime. The country joined NATO in 2004 and the EU in 2007. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Bulgaria.

Reviews

Bulgaria was once the poorest and the least known of the Eastern Bloc countries. After the fall of the communist regime in 1989, Bulgaria made democratization strides, becoming a member of NATO (2004) and the European Union (2007). Unfortunately, corruption was rife and remains so. This edition follows the format of the previous two, which were authored by Detrez (Univ. of Ghent); he published the first in 1998 and is coauthor of Europe and the Historical Legacies in the Balkans (2008). The current volume replaces the earlier editions and, like them, supplies maps, acronyms, abbreviations, and appendixes of political parties, heads of state, prime ministers, and Bulgarian cabinets from 1989 to present. The introduction covers Bulgarian political history, and the chronology covers historical beginnings in antiquity through November 2014. The dictionary section has been expanded and updated with more than 700 cross-referenced entries. The fine classified bibliography (with an introduction) is organized by subject (widely ranging from Bulgaria's ethnicity and politics to its flora and fauna), has been greatly enlarged with citations in English and other languages, and includes a separate listing of Internet resources. Summing Up: Recommended. All academic audiences; general readers. * CHOICE *
Those who take more than a fleeting glance at the Dictionary must be impressed by how thoroughly the author knows the country whose history he is describing. He covers not only its political, economic and social history, but also its culture, devoting, for instance, three pages to Bulgarian cinema, a subject of which few Western writers have knowledge. . . .This Dictionary will certainly enlighten its readers about the past and present of a country which does not often figure in the Western media. * s *

Author Bio

Raymond Detrez is the founder and director of the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Ghent. He is a member of the Belgian Centre for Slavic Studies and the Belgian Society for Byzantine Studies. His interdisciplinary research is related mainly to Balkan history from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries and focuses on aspects of pre-national and national group identities.