Istvan Deak, Seth Low Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, specializes in central and east central European history. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1964. He is presently working on a book entitled Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution in Europe during and After World War II.

Hungary's War of Independence was the bloodiest conflict of the European revolutionary era, exciting nationalist passions that burn hot till this day. The story of this dramatic time unfolds through the towering personality of Louis Kossuth--a principal actor in the dramatic events. He and his fellow noblemen sized the opportunity offered by the continent's upheavals to restore Hungary's sovereignty under the Habsburg Crown. They introduced many administrative, social, and economic reforms...only to run into the opposition of many of the country's most powerful forces. In 1949, Kossuth fled--never to return home again.