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History of Eastern Europe

A Captivating Guide to a Shortened History of Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Moldova, Belarus, and Romania

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History of Eastern Europe

By: Captivating History
Narrated by: Jay Herbert
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How much Eastern European history do you know?

The story of Eastern Europe is one of successes and failures, competing interests, and the rise and fall of states and empires. The ancient Greek and Roman empires knew the importance of Eastern Europe for trade and settlement. Later, during the Migration Period, also known as the “Barbarian Invasions", Eastern Europe became the stomping grounds for many people. The Visigoths, Huns, Slavs, and central Asian Turkic tribes like the Avars and Khazars all made their way into Eastern Europe.

With so many people moving in, the first states started to rise. Some of them would break apart as soon as they started, while others would form full-fledged empires. The medieval period would see some of the greatest empires of European history, like Kievan Rus, the Bulgarian Empire, Serbia, and the German Crusader states. By the early modern period, these great states would be replaced by Russia, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Ottoman Empire.

In this audiobook, you will learn about:

  • The Greek and Roman influence in Eastern Europe
  • The Migration Period, a.k.a. the “Barbarian Invasions”
  • Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire
  • The Mongol invasions
  • Christian Europe vs. the Ottoman Empire
  • The fall of Constantinople
  • The rise of Russia and its famous rulers, like Ivan the Terrible and Catherine the Great
  • The path to World War I and World War II
  • The Jewish experience in Eastern Europe
  • The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc
  • The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism
  • The conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo
  • The 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea

To learn more about Eastern Europe than you ever thought possible, add History of Eastern Europe to your cart today!

©2021 Captivating History (P)2021 Captivating History
Eastern Europe Russia Imperialism Ottoman Empire Middle Ages Crusade Eastern Europe Czech History
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The book seems to have been drawn from loose snippets of history texts without any kind of editing. Information is repeated, not presented consistently, or full of contradictions. That said, the subject matter is interesting, and at least the book provides a bird's-eye view of an often overlooked part of world history.

The narration is simply awful. The narrator seems to stress words at random, or forget halfway through the sentence what he's saying. His pronunciation is terrible, not only with words and names that might be unfamiliar to an English speaker, but also with common English words. It's also inconsistent, changing from sentence to sentence. The Read Aloud function in Word would do a better job.

With these caveats, I recommend listening to get a basic grasp of Eastern European history, unless you can find pretty much any other audiobook that covers the same topic.

Sloppy writing, terrible narration

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30,000 ft overview of the history of the part of the world that has been, and continues to be so influencial to world history.

There is little in the way of detail by design, favouring a narration of specific threads of the historical places, figures and peoples

Sadly, the narrator appears to put an inflection at the end of almost every sentence, which makes it sound like he is mildly surprised buy what he's just read.

This bizarre foible completely ruined the book for me, as I find myself zoning out and not taking in what is being narrated.

I really wanted to like this

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A welcome quick history of an important area but spoiled by the presenter’s bizarre pronunciation of names of people and places I thought should be known to anyone reading such a history.

Such a shame!

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A great intro to Eastern European history. Shamefully I didn’t know it was quite this rich and varied. It took me a while to finish this book as there were so many brief summaries and passing mentions of things to go and research further.
The narrator doesn’t pronounce all names correctly, but with a basic knowledge of European history/ geography I worked out where he was referring to. Might be less of a problem for American listeners.

Great primer

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Eastern European history is rich and captivating. This much-needed overview is overshadowed by the bizarre pronunciation and cadence of the narrator.

Great content, poor narration.

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