"The lives of wealthy people have long held an allure to many, but the lives of wealthy Russians pose a particular fascination. Having achieved their riches over the course of a single generation, the top 0.1 percent of Russian society have become known for ostentatious lifestyles and tastes. Nevertheless, as Elisabeth Schimpfössl shows in this book, their stories reveal a bourgeois existence that is distinct in its circumstances and self-definition, and far more complex than the caricatures suggest.

Rich Russians takes a deep and unprecedented look at this group: their personal stories, trajectories, ideas about life and how they see their role and position both on top of Russian society as well as globally (OUP, Amazon.com)

Was the Cold War only about the rivalry of the US and the USSR? Did the Soviet Union oppress East European states or did these states wield agency to shape their foreign policies? Who profited from the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe? This episode of the Evolution of Capitalism podcast seeks an answer to these questions with historian Csaba Békés, whose recent book Détente and Emancipation argues that we need to reconsider our understanding of the Cold War, centered too much on Moscow and Washington. Instead, he shows why the satellite states of the Stalinist era gradually 'emancipated' themselves into veritable allies of the USSR and played an important role in accelerating the collapse of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Political theorist Steven Klein makes a powerful case as to why Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation has to be read today. Polanyi provides an alternative for both pro-market globalism and nationalist populism and prefigures current concerns with environmentalism as well. Does he provide a hopeful scenario for the future of capitalism? Is Polanyi merely Marx 2.0? Klein explains both The Great Transformation's key ideas and history or reception since WWII.

Why did some interwar politicians think that population engineering could serve the interests of democracy? Shannon Monaghan explains why many in France were convinced after 1918 that the removal of the recently reannexed Alsace-Lorraine's German population was necessary to solidify democracy. Shannon talks about her new comparative history of post-1918 transitions, Protecting Democracy from Dissent: Population Engineering in Western Europe, 1918-1926.

What is German about German history? At the centennial of 1918, Ferenc Laczo reflects on ruptures and continuities in modern German history including major debates around the origins and memory of the holocaust in Western and East-Central Europe. What have historians who have studied twentieth-century German history accomplished and what remains to be done? What are the most interesting and innovative recent books on the holocaust and WWII? [photo: www.fortepan.hu]

Even though the first image that comes to mind about Ceaușescu’s Romania is the sweeping destruction of traditional city centers, Liliana Iuga talks about the socialist impetus to save urban resources and a mure nuanced approach to demolitions in communist Romania. What was the role of historical preservation within socialist urbanism? How did interwar technocrats become recycled in the 1950s and 1960s? How did urban property rights inhibit the planners of a socialist state?

What is Populism? Origins, Narratives, Counter-narratives with Philip Gorski by Mate Rigo

During the 1970s, the European car industry became increasingly international and more frustrated by intra-European trade barriers. After Ford began profitably selling on the continent, other automakers followed suit; this served to create a continental vehicle market and made intra-regional regulatory barriers more important. While this was occurring, the European Community began to regulate automobiles

with an eye toward liberalizing the continental market in vehicles. Gary Winslett explores some of the tensions between trade liberalization and a quest for a pan-European environmental regulation in the 1970s and 1980s. (Photo credit: "Mercedes Benz in Karlovy Vary," Fortepan database, nr. 51313, www.fortepan.hu)

Why did anti-Western conspiracy theories emerge as mainstream discourses that attempted to explain Russian politics? How do 19th Russian interpretations of the Crimean War relate to current discussions on the 2014 annexation of Crimea and Russia’s relationship with “the West”? Do contemporary American and Russian conspiracy theories share family resemblances?

Was prostitution a means of social mobility for women in fin-de-siècle Habsburg Central Europe? How widespread was prostitution in Cisleithanian Austria during the First World War? How were women recruited into prostitution, what were their working conditions and how do we get from Austria to Argentina? Nancy Wingfield has revisited some of these issues in her new book, The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford University Press, 2017)