Table of Contents

Introduction: The GOlden Republic
1. Myth and Wartime
2. The Castle
3. Battles of the Legend-Makers
4. Difficulties Abroad
5. A Time of Iron and Fire
Epilogue
Notes

About the Author

Andrea Orzoff is Associate Professor of History at New Mexico State University.

Reviews

"Andrea Orzoff is superbly qualified as the author of this book, not only because she has immersed herself inthe relevant primary and secondary literature on the topic but also because of her background in journalism, which was the primary tool for spreading the myth. She also shows that national questions remain an important part of the historical agenda in Central Europe when historical actors define them as important."--American Historical Review
"Battle for the Castle is a stimulating and imaginative history of statecraft in interwar Czechoslovakia....[It] is an important, engaging, and lucid study of Czechoslovakia's political culture, and of its struggle for legitimacy....[E]ssential reading for anyone who hopes to understand the vexed history of democracy and nation-making in twentieth-century Europe."--H-Net
"[Battle for the Castle] does a great job in tying together the simultaneous use of myth in nation building at home and in promoting the state's image and interests abroad...Andrea Orzoff has taken her place among [an] impressive cohort of English-language historians of Czechoslovakia."--Slavic Review
"This well-written and researched study will be essential to anyone interested not only in Czechoslovak interwar history, but also in the impact of various national myths on our recent history."--Zbysek Brezina, History Today Books
"Battle for the Castle-the story of a myth-is more broadly a story about what it means to be European-and what it means to be a small East-Central European country coveting the support of the West. The book will be of interest to all those who want to understand more about those peculiarly fascinating years between the two world wars."--Marci Shore, author of Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968
"Propaganda and myth, as Andrea Orzoff shows in this impressively researched and powerfully argued book, not only helped bring Czechoslovakia into existence after World War I; they informed nearly every aspect of interwar Czechoslovakia's political culture and foreign policy efforts. Anyone interested in cultural diplomacy, the failure of interwar European democracies, and relationships between modern media and political power should read Battle for the
Castle."--Chad Bryant, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"Battle for the Castle embodies the finest qualities of intellectual and cultural history as they are practiced today. Offering nuanced insights on the character of inter-war Prague's civil society, Andrea Orzoff takes us behind the scenes in the Castle, in editorial offices, in board rooms, in cafes, and in private homes, to reveal just who created the Masaryk myths, who financed and propagated them, and what critical political functions they served
both domestically and internationally."--Pieter M. Judson, Swarthmore College