DEAK, Istvan 1926-

PERSONAL: Born May 11, 1926, in Szekesfehervar, Hungary; immigrated to United States, 1956, naturalized citizen, 1962; son of Istvan (an engineer) and Anna (Timar) Deak; married Gloria Alfano (a freelance editor and writer), July 4, 1959; children: Eva. Education: Attended University of Budapest, 1945-48; attended University of Paris, 1949-51; Ecole de Documentation, diploma, 1950; attended University of Maryland, 1954-56; Columbia University, M.A., 1958, Ph.D., 1964.

ADDRESSES: Home—410 Riverside Dr., New York, NY 10025. Office—1229 International Affairs Building, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Freelance researcher and translator, New York, NY, 1956-59; Smith College, Northampton, MA, instructor, 1962-63; Columbia University, New York, NY, instructor, 1963-64, assistant professor, 1964-67, associate professor, 1967-71, professor of history, 1971-93, Seth Lon professor of history, 1993—, director of Institute on East Central Europe, 1967-78, acting director, 1979-80, 1983. University of Maryland Overseas Program, West Germany, lecturer, 1961; School of General Studies, Columbia University, New York, NY, 1961-62; Yale University, New Haven, CT, visiting lecturer, 1966; University of California, Los Angeles, visiting professor, 1975; Universitaet Siegen, West Germany, visiting professor; 1981. German Academic Exchange fellow, 1960-61, Fulbright-Hays Travel fellow, 1973, 1984-85. Member of Joint Committee on Slavic Studies, 1967-69. International Research and Exchanges Board travel fellow, 1972, 1973, 1984-85, fellowship committee member, 1980-83, program committee member, 1983-1989. American Council of Learned Societies, committee member, 1972-74, fellow, 1981. Committee to Promote Studies of the History of the Hapsburg Monarchy, executive secretary, 1974-77. Conference Group for Slavic and East European History, vice president, 1975-77, president, 1985. Member of Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 1981. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, fellow, 1985, advisory committee member, 1985-88.

MEMBER: World Association of Hungarian Historians (vice president, 1990—), American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (president of Mid-Atlantic Association, 1977-78, member of board of directors, 1985-88), American Association for the Study of Hungarian History (awards committee chairman, 1974—, vice chairman, 1979-80, chairman, 1980-83), Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

AWARDS, HONORS: Scudder W. Johnston fellowship, Columbia University, 1959-60; Chamberlain fellow, Columbia University, 1966; study grant, School of International Affairs, Columbia University, 1969; Guggenheim fellowship, 1970-71; Lionel Trilling Book Award, Columbia University, 1977, for The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848-1849, and 1979; Wayne S. Vuchinich Book Prize, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 1991, and outstanding academic book, Choice, both 1991, for Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Hapsburg Officer Corps, 1848-1918.

WRITINGS:

Weimar Germany's Left-Wing Intellectuals: A Political History of the Weltbuehne and Its Circle, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1968.

(Editor, with Sylvia Sinanian and Peter C. Ludz) Eastern Europe in the 1970s (conference papers), Praeger (New York, NY), 1972.

Assimilation and Nationalism in East Central Europe during the Last Century of Habsburg Rule, University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA), 1983.

(Editor, with Allan Mitchell) Everyman in Europe: Essays in Social History, two volumes, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1974, 3rd edition, 1989.

Jewish Soldiers in Austro-Hungarian Society, Leo Baeck Institute (New York, NY), 1990.

The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848-1849, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1979, translated as Die rechtmassige Revolution, Bohlau Verlag (Vienna, Austria), Akademiai Kiado (Budapest, Hungary), 1989, Kossuth Lajos es a magyarok, Godalet (Budapest, Hungary), 1983, 2nd edition, 1994.

Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Hapsburg Officer Corps, 1848-1918, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1989, translated as Der k.(u.)k. Offizier, Bohlau Verlag (Vienna, Austria), 1991, Volt egyszer egy tisztikar, Gondolat (Budapest, Hungary), 1993, Gli ufficiali della monarchia asburgica. Oltre il nazionalismo, Editrice Goriziana (Gorizia, Italy), 1994.

(Editor, with Jan T. Gross and Tony Judt) The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2000.

Essays on Hitler's Europe, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2001.

Also contributor to many books on history, particularly of Eastern Europe, including The European Right: A Historical Profile, edited by Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1965; The American and European Revolutions, 1776-1848, edited by Jaroslaw Pelenski, University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 1980; The Holocaust in Hungary Forty Years Later, edited by Randolph L. Braham and Bela Vago, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1985; and Nationalism and Empire: The Hapsburg Empire and the Soviet Union, edited by Richard L. Rudolph and David F. Good, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1992. Contributor to Encyclopedia Year Book 1973. Contributor to New York Review of Books, Slavonic and East European Review, Austrian History Yearbook, Oesterreichische Osthefte, East Central Europe, New Hungarian Quarterly, Romania Bulletin, American Historical Review, New Republic, Orbis, and other journals. Author of book reviews for periodicals, including New York Times, Slavic Review, and American Historical Review. Member of editorial advisory board, Political Science Quarterly, 1969-70, board of editors, Austrian History Yearbook, 1971-77, editorial board, Slavic Review, 1985-92.

SIDELIGHTS: A "prominent historian and prolific author," in the words of Library Journal's Barbara Walden, Istvan Deak has contributed full-scale histories as well as a plethora of essays on the history of Eastern Europe, Germany, and World War II to professional and popular journals alike. Deak immigrated to the United States in 1956, earning his doctorate at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1962.

Deak's full-length works include studies of Weimar Germany, the 1848 Hungarian revolution, and a history of the Habsburg officer corps. His year 2000 offering, The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath, is a collection of essays examining the problem of collaboration and "retributive jurisprudence in the aftermath of World War II," according to Library Journal's Zachary T. Irwin. Edited in collaboration with Jan T. Gross and Tony Judt, this book "makes a splendid contribution toward the rewriting of postwar European history," according to History's Trevor Burridge. In edition to co-editing the volume, Deak also contributed an essay on such concerns in postwar Hungary.

In his 2001 title, Essays on Hitler's Europe, Deak collected his own essays from journals such as the New York Review of Books and the New Republic—many of them book reviews of scholarly works—to provide "an engaging series of overviews of the issues surrounding Hitler's era," according to Walden, reviewing the collection in Library Journal. A contributor for Publishers Weekly noted that Deak provides "a balanced, incisive review" of the prodigious amount of Holocaust and Nazi-era studies, and that his work can stand as "an up-to-date shortcut to holocaust scholarship." Paul Reitter, reviewing the collection of essays gathered from over eighteen years, felt that it was generally well balanced, but especially praised those essays dealing with Deak's area of specialty, Eastern Europe. "[W]hile all of the carefully argued, elegantly written essays in Hitler's Europe will inform and impress," wrote Reitter, "Deak is at his most redoubtably erudite when he reviews books that deal with Hungary, Poland, Romania and Lithuania during the Third Reich." And Jay Freeman, writing in Booklist, found Essays on Hitler's Europe to be an "engrossing and greatly informative compilation."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Directory of American Scholars, Volume 1: History, 9th edition, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Writer's Directory, 2001, 16th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

PERIODICALS

Australian Journal of Politics and History, September, 2001, R. J. B. Bobsworth, review of The Politics of Retribution in Europe, p. 443.

Booklist, October 1, 2001, Jay Freeman, review of Essays on Hitler's Europe, p. 296.

English Historical Review, June, 2001, Derek W. Urwin, review of The Politics of Retribution in Europe, p. 763.

Europe-Asia Studies, December, 2000, Richard Crampton, review of The Politics of Retribution in Europe, p. 1553.

History, summer, 2000, Trevor Burridge, review of The Politics of Retribution in Europe, p. 162.

Library Journal, June 1, 2000, Zachary T. Irwin, review of The Politics of Retribution in Europe, p. 156; October 1, 2001, Barbara Walden, review of Essays on Hitler's Europe, pp. 119-120.

Nation, December 24, 2001, Paul Reitter, review of Essays on Hitler's Europe, p. 36.

Perspectives on Political Science, winter, 2001, Paul Buteux, review of The Politics of Retribution in Europe, p. 54.

Publishers Weekly, October 15, 2001, review of Essays on Hitler's Europe, p. 55.

Times Literary Supplement, April 14, 2000, Alan S. Milward, review of The Politics of Retribution in Europe, pp. 7-8.*