This four-volume set of handbooks offers comprehensive survey of the history of a region that went from domination by various Empires before the First World War to membership of the EU in the late twentieth century.

Challenges of Modernity offers a broad account of the social and economic history of Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth century and asks critical questions about the structure and experience of modernity in different contexts and periods. Statehood examines the extending lines of development of nation-state systems in Eastern Europe, in particular considering why certain tendencies in state development found a different expression in this region compared to other parts of the continent. Intellectual Horizons offers a pioneering, transnational and comparative treatment of key thematic areas in the intellectual and cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth century. Violence analyses both the violence exerted on the societies of Central and Eastern Europe during the twentieth century by belligerent powers and authoritarian and/or totalitarian regimes and armed conflicts between ethnic, social and national groups, as well as the interaction between these two phenomena.

Transnational and comparative in approach, key lines of development are synthesised leading to a complex understanding of the region. Written by a range of international contributors, many from the region itself, this is the go-to resource on Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe in the twentieth century.