Includes bibliographical references (p. 508-532) and index.
"Heathen Barbarians" overrun Europe: evidence from St Gallen -- Land acquisition or conquest? The question of Hungarian identity -- From Magyar Mayhem to the Christian Kingdom of the Arpads -- The struggle for continuity and freedom -- The Mongol invasion of 1241 and its consequences -- Hungary's rise to great power status under foreign kings -- The Heroic Age of the Hunyadis and the Turkish danger -- The long road to the catastrophe of Mohacs -- The disaster of Ottoman rule -- Transylvania---the stronghold of Hungarian sovereignty -- Gabor Bethlen---Vassal, patriot and European -- Zrinyi of Zrinski? One hero for two nations -- The Kuruc Leader Thokoly: adventurer or traitor? -- Ferenc Rakoczi's fight for freedom from the Habsburgs -- Myth and historiography: an idol through the ages -- Hungary in the Habsburg Shadow -- The fight against the "Hatted King" -- Abbot Martinovics and the Jacobin plot.
Count Istvan Szechenyi and the "Reform Era": the "Greatest Hungarian" -- Lajos Kossuth and Sandor Petofi: symbols of 1848 -- Victories, defeat and collapse: the Lost War of Independence, 1849 -- Kossuth the Hero versus "Judas" Gorgey: "Good" and "Bad" in sacrificial mythology -- Who was Captain Gusev? Russian "Freedom Fighters" between Minsk and Budapest -- Elisabeth, Andrassy and Bismarck: Austria and Hungary on the road to reconciliation -- Victory in defeat: the compromise and the consequences of dualism -- Total blindness: the Hungarian sense of mission and the nationalities -- The "Golden Age" of the millennium: modernization with drawbacks -- "Magyar Jew or Jewish Magyar?" a unique symbiosis -- "Will Hungary be German or Magyar?" The Germans' peculiar role -- From the Great War to the "Dictatorship of Despair": the Red Count and Lenin's agent -- The Admiral on a White Horse: Trianon and the Death Knel of St Stephen's realm -- Adventurers, counterfeiters, claimants to the throne: Hungary as troublemaker in the Danube Basin -- Marching in step with Hitler: triumph and fall. From the persecution of Jews to mob rule -- Victory in defeat: 1945-1990 -- "Everyone is a Hungarian": geniuses and artists -- Summing-up.