Not a light read. Too demanding, if you just want to learn the general outline and know more about the Hungarians.

"The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat" by Paul Lendvai. A wonderful gift from on my brother on my retirement. I was excited on receiving it. ( )

It seems to provide a reasonable overview of Hungarian history. I did get lost in a sea of names however. Also, it is on the long side. ( )

To Paul Lendvai, the besetting sin of Hungarian culture is its "cult of history" and "the nationalistic sense of mission" that has resulted. This might be tolerable except for another unfortunate facet of the Hungarian national character (the main topic of this work), and that is the sense of paranoia over being an isolated people with possibly little to offer besides an esoteric language and a host of colorful legends. Lendvai traces these tendencies by examining exemplary personalities across the span of of Hungarian history, and he's at his best when he has a colorful character to peg his insights to. The downside of this is that Lendvai's prose tends to flag when examining the more cut and dry factors of national developement. While this is certainly the best account I've read of the general thrust of Hungarian history, particularly for capturing the spirit of the medieval and early modern periods, I do wish that Lendvai could have offered a better explanation (as opposed to description) of the origins of the destructive sense of entitlement that afflicted the Hungarian aristocracy, as so many of the evils of Hungarian history can be traced to this trait. ( )