Czechs and Balances : A Nation's Survival Kit

By Benjamin Kuras

Book Overview

Small trade paperback in English by Baronet books. The author is a Czech-born British writer, broadcaster, journalist, and translator who begin his work in Moravia in 1966. "Makes Czech history look... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 8072141368
• ISBN13: 9788072141364
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Baronet
• Length: 198 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Entertaining must-read for everyone interested in Czech culture!

If you plan to visit Prague and want to know more than just "they have great beer", or if you just enjoy well-written books, then this one is an excellent choice. "Czechs and Balances" is a fast-paced and delightfully witty look at the Czech psyche and history. On the surface, the style is lighthearted and entertaining: "The Czechs, says English kabbalist Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi, have always worshiped three things: women, food, and God - in that order. [...] As they grow older and wiser, however, the Czechs restructure their worship priorities in reverse order: food, women, and God." This style alone would probably be enough reward for reading this book. But Kuras (a veteran journalist at the BBC service in Czech) is much deeper than this. In particular, he's a smart person who understands the "flexible" nature of historical discourse: "It is often said that nations, their characteristics, temperaments, aspirations, and degrees of success or failure, are the result of their history. It is, in fact, the other way around. Most nations' histories consist partly of legends and myths, partly of biased interpretation of some actually documented and some putative historical events, but mainly of a current consensus to view the collective past in a way which would assist in the creation of a particular model of the future." Not surprisingly, his book presents "The Legends" before "[The] Events which made them". The last part manages to present more than 1000 years of Czech history in less than 100 small pages, in a captivating style mixing irony and love, focused on ideas, at the expense of chronological dates and other boring details that usually pass as "history". On the negative side, the ironic, critical tone may give the impression that Kuras gives a fully impartial presentation of history. Unfortunately, there is a catch! As Kuras writes, "rewriting history to one's image in order to change one's future is a legitimate tool of national survival" (page 11). Most readers will be too captivated by the style to notice it, but Kuras is rewriting history too ... In particular, all the good things seem to emanate from ethnic Czechs. A notable exception is done for the Jews, but the mention of any positive influence coming from the German space is conspicuously absent. And Kuras's position on the "orderly government-organized transfer" (i.e., expulsion) of 2.5 million Sudeten Germans immediately after WWII seems ambiguous (although he does complain about the disorderly massacres). Kuras should have done a better job on this issue, in a book that (as I read) is a big hit with tourists in Prague. After all, as Kuras informs us, most of the 100 millions tourists who enter Czech Republic every year are Germans crossing the border for an evening beer!