An Illustrated History of Lithuania

The tumult of lavish banquets, the triumph and fall of powerful empires, the murkiness of the political conspiracies, and the riveting romances of the royals are like a medley of images from old memories, grandparents' stories, books, TV shows, and computer games. During the Soviet occupation, the history of Lithuania was rewritten by strangers, silencing and falsifying facts for generations of people, brainwashing them. Like in the Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors, villains became heroes and heroes became criminals. Now we are free, so let us not be afraid to challenge this still flowing river of lies and to honestly assess the past.

We live in the 21st century surrounded by modern digital technologies that are changing the conventional understanding of books. This book, with its many illustrations, maps, and excerpts from primary sources, is also different. Its genre should perhaps be called a cocktail of history that combines image and word, academic knowledge and journalism, and various episodes and themes, past and present. Readers will find everything here: watershed events in Lithuanian history, epoch-making victories, equally important cultural achievements, episodes and curiosities of everyday life, and great men and women. Almost every topic involves the history of Vilnius, Lithuania's capital.

The first volume covers the period of the nation's development from the Baltic tribes of prehistory and the creation of a state in the 13th century to the fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795.