This important volume introduces English readers to one of the most critical periods of Central European history when “Hungary became the periphery and battleground of two empires, the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy” (1). The volume’s author, Géza Pálffy, is research professor at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Institute of History and has written numerous groundbreaking studies on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some of these studies, such as the masterful The Kingdom of Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy in the Sixteenth Century, are available in English translation.1 Pálffy’s Hungary between Two Empires presents a synthesis of his scholarly expertise as well as a thoughtful assessment of the current state of research on early modern Hungary. Pálffy dispels several standard interpretations that have impaired previous Hungarian historical scholarship, which is one of the volume’s great strengths.
The book is intended to appeal to a wide readership, ranging...
