Highly acclaimed and thoroughly updated, Return to Diversity, Fourth Edition, provides a comprehensive political history of East Central Europe from World War II to the present. An engaging and straightforward political narrative, the book is organized chronologically in a country-by-country format that students can easily navigate. Each section summarizes and examines the most important themes in Eastern Europe during the rise and fall of Communism. The text features balanced discussions of relevant political events, along with a detailed analysis of the causes and consequences of Communism from the perspective of post-Communist regimes.

Nancy M. Wingfield has revised the fourth edition to incorporate additional social and economic history into the text's strong discussions of political history. She also provides expanded coverage of the resurgence of nationalism in the 1980s, the role of dissident movements in the shift to democracy, and the problems of Communism. To make the region's history even more relevant to students, Return to Diversity now concludes with a compelling look at the contemporary reintegration of the "new" and "old" Europes.

Unsurpassed in scope, depth of analysis, and objectivity, Return to Diversity continues to be an invaluable resource for both professors and students of this region's vivid political history.

The late Joseph Rothschild served as Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science and Associate of the Institute on East Central Europe at Columbia University. His books include Ethnopolitics: A Conceptual Framework (1981), East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars (1974), Pilsudski's Coup d'État (1966), and The Communist Party of Bulgaria (1959.

Nancy M. Wingfield is Professor of History at Northern Illinois University. She is author of Flag Wars and Stone Saints: How the Bohemian Lands Became Czech (forthcoming in 2007); editor of Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe (2003); and coeditor, with Maria Bucur, of Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (2006) and Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present (2001).