Content area
Full text
Charles Jonas (1840-1896): Czech National Liberal, Wisconsin Bourbon Democrat. By C. Winston Chrislock. (Philadelphia: Balch Institute Press, 1993. 209 pp. $37.50, ISBN 0-944190-11-1.)
The new study by C. Winston Chrislock, Charles Jonas, is a rare and very important book. It is not common for an American author to take an interest in a Czech or Czech-American topic and make it available and attractive for general American readers. Chrislock has done it in a wonderful and very successful way. The study of Charles Jonas, an important political and cultural figure in nineteenth-century Europe and the United States, is a rare and deep probe into the difficult and strained circumstances of central European life, into the depressed conditions in which the Czech intelligentsia and the whole nation lived and worked, often emigrating or migrating during the second half of the nineteenth century.
This theme has made it possible for Americans to open new geographic, social, political, intellectual, psychological, and historical horizons, especially because of the great mobility of the main hero. Charles Jonas, a Czech-American politician, journalist, and diplomat, was a freedom seeker...