Victor Sebestyen offers a readable, one-volume history of Budapest from its Roman beginnings as Aquincum (plus a little more than a page on pre-Roman findings) through the time of the book’s publication in 2022, although it is very light on the years after the anti-communist uprising of 1956. Out of the book’s 377 pages, the remaining 33 years of the communist era and the 33 years from the revolution of 1989 — in which Hungary played a pivotal role for all of Europe — to the present receive 10 pages each. Though post-1989 Budapest really only gets four pages, Sebestyen still finds space to misread Fukuyama; and though Viktor Orban had been prime minister for about fourteen years (in two separate periods) by the time of publication, Sebestyen only mentions him as a student-age speaker at the reburial of Imre Nagy. The book is much stronger on the Habsburg period, and particularly on the 19th century that saw explosive growth, the merger of Buda and Pest into a single city, and the construction of the city’s modern appearance. It’s a defensible choice, as the 19th century did so much to shape the city’s current character and appearance, but between this emphasis and effectively ending the story in 1956, Sebestyen leaves the book looking at the past and giving short shrift to the gorgeous and dynamic city that Budapest has become as the 20th century turned into the 21st.

Two more minor quibbles. First, the book has the subtitle “Portrait of a City Between East and West,” which is true enough, but the same can be said (and often is) of every major city between Munich and Moscow in one direction and between Venice and Ankara in the other. Though the phrase may be good marketing, it’s hardly unique to Budapest. Similarly, when Sebestyen writes about Hungary’s battles against the Ottoman Empire (roughly pages 47 to 63) he writes of the Magyar nation as a bulwark of Christendom against invaders from the East. This term has also been applied to Poles (and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), Serbs, Croatians and even, as a little background searching showed, Albanians and Armenians. These examples point to my second quibble, which is that a little more comparative work would have improved the book. A sentence here and there about Vienna, Krakow or other Central European capitals would have helped to put Budapest into a broader context. Sebestyen is right when he writes in his introduction that Budapest

is at the crossroads of geographical regions and of civilizations, at the intersection of ancient trade routes. Mountains that gradually slope into gentle hills converge on a great river, the Danube, and a vast plain. Mediterranean Latin, Alpine German and Slavic peoples meet here. This is the focal point of Roman Catholic, North European Protestant and Greek Orthodox/Byzantine cultures. (p. 2)

All the more reason to place the city among its peers, to look around a bit even whilst concentrating on one urban area. Of course it helps to get the comparisons right. Sebestyen writes

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