Lorraine Murray
1) Italy
It is almost impossible to think about Italy without recalling its Renaissance art masterpieces, its spectacular landscapes, or its widely loved cuisine. Although these combined elements hint at a united Italian culture, Italy is truly a country comprised of individual regions, each with their own identities, histories, and traditions. Readers will follow Italy's trajectory from a land of disparate barbarian kingdoms to a republic, discovering
...Although vastly different in many ways, Austria, Croatia, and Slovenia together form the heart of Central Europe. Austria has historically been much more visible in European politics than either Croatia or Slovenia, but as with the latter two, it has also been a part of various alliances over the centuries. Despite that, however, all three have retained their own sense of national identity through it all, weathering the fall of Austria-Hungary,
...Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia share a remarkably similar trajectory on their individual paths to becoming the nations they are today. Each had ties to the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman empires in earlier times, all became Eastern-bloc countries in the 20th century, and all successfully emerged from Communist rule in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. These multi-layered lands—where folk traditions still
...