"This is a book that gives as much attention to those ‘little purposes’ of everyday life as it does to the grand visions of political regimes. It subjects conventional understandings of grand historical narratives to the messy, contingent, personal and entangled projects that animate experiences of public space, social order and identity in everyday life. In so doing, it challenges and reimagines the terms in which a city’s histories and geographies can be told."
Shawn Bodden, Eurasian Geography and Economics
"Even to readers not specializing in the history of Lviv or Ukraine, the book offers interesting insights and observations regarding the construction of the rhetoric of belonging by the changing design of Lviv’s railway terminal, as well as the history of railway workers. Zayarnyuk offers a new approach to reconstructing Ukrainian national history by reevaluating collective identities and problematizing the meaning and role of the national factor in this history."
Simone Attilio Bellezza, Ab Imperio
“Zayarnyuk’s meticulously researched study remains important…it also provides vital context for very recent history."
Kathryn Ciancia, University of Wisconsin–Madison, American Historical Review
"With expert research, Lviv’s Uncertain Destination combines a very thorough analysis of archives along with published contemporary primary sources, while uniquely using the train terminal in Lviv as a point of departure for a socio-economic and political history of the city."
Theodore R. Weeks, Department of History, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
"Starting from the Lviv railway station, near which he was born, Andriy Zayarnyuk takes us through the modern history of that complicated and often tragic city. He considers the evolving challenges of ethnic rivalries, the tensions of social class, and the frequently violent political life from imperial Habsburg days through the Great War, Polish domination, Nazi occupation, Russian and Soviet hegemony, and into contemporary Europe, where Lviv is the most prosperous city in troubled Ukraine. This is a splendid, important, and truly engaging book."
John Merriman, Department of History, Yale University
Add to Wishlist
