Destinations Past

From the Publisher

"This gem of a book is filled with fascinating anecdotes, cogent observations, and it is a superb blending of the genres of travel and history writing."--Booklist

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

There are some strong moments in this uneven miscellany of historian Lukacs's ( The End of the Twentieth Century and the Passing of the Modern Age ) travel-history essays. Published over a 40-year period in such diverse periodicals as the National Review and Harper's Bazaar , the pieces include a particularly interesting account of his visit to Hitler's birthplace on what would have been his 100th birthday. Here, Lukacs pays homage to a Catholic peasant from the neighboring village who cast the only vote against Hitler. Another piece describes London at the time of Churchill's funeral. Lukacs, a native of Budapest who fled to the U.S. at the age of 23 when the Communists came to power in Hungary, draws an affectionate picture of Philadelphia, where he settled and taught history. Much traveled, Lukacs combines a scholar's background with charming but often sketchy impressions from his visits to Venice, Dresden, Warsaw, Transylvania, the Austrian Alps and Scandinavia. His reports of his 1989 and 1990 visits to Budapest and his comments on the Hungarian national character have the warmth and intimacy of a native's knowledge of the culture and excitement over its current revival. (June)

Library Journal

Lukacs, noted author of works on contemporary European and American history and society (The End of the 20th Century, Ticknor & Fields, 1993), here presents himself in a lighter mood with these occasional pieces about 40 years of travel. He seeks to capture the mood of the moment and the essence of an era. In London during the funeral of Winston Churchill, for example, Lukacs reflects on the end of an age. Visiting a small Austrian village on Adolph Hitler's 100th birthday, he meditates on the significance of the career of whom he judges to be the greatest revolutionary of the 20th century. Urbane and sophisticated and gracefully written, these magazine articles nevertheless seem faded and somewhat mannered. Not an essential purchase.-Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., CUNY

Jay Freeman

In this charming collection of essays, Lukacs looks back on 40 years of travel in the U.S. and Europe. Born and raised in Hungary, he has lived in the U.S. since 1946. Thus, Lukacs brings a transatlantic perspective to his musings on people and places, and he consistently places his observations within the broader historical context. He shows us Vienna in 1958, at that time a focal point in the cold war, but he contrasts it with the same city eight years earlier when grinding economic privation was the prime reality. He uses the occasion of Pope John Paul II's visit to the U.S. in 1979 to brilliantly examine the power and moral authority of the papacy in contemporary times. This gem of a book is filled with fascinating anecdotes and cogent observations, and it is a superb blending of the genres of travel writing and history.

Booknews

A collection of astute travel/history essays. Most, but not all, have been published during the last 40 years in various magazines--often with different titles and texts that are not completely identical--among them, The New Yorker, National Review, and The New Republic. Among the titles: "Three Days in London: Churchill's Funeral, Hitler's One-Hundredth Birthday," and "Budapest Resurrected." Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR booknews.com