Greece is a ancient land, blessed with a stunning natural beauty and an inspiring cultural heritage but burdened with history and conflict, it shares many traits and comparable trajectories with its neighbors and countries of a similar background. Modern Greece is a successor nation-state of the Ottoman Empire, created in the early 19th century through the interplay of an evolving Greek national idea, the crisis of the Ottoman state, and the intervention of great powers.

Historical Dictionary of Modern Greece, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 200 cross-referenced entries on important personalities as well as aspects of the country’s politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Greece.

Since the publication of the first edition of the Historical Dictionary of Modern Greece (CH, Apr'10, 47-4189), the country has experienced profound change: it is now a significant member of the European Union (EU) since first joining in 1981. This development, combined with the country's illustrious past, warrants an updated edition from Keridis, who is also a member of the Greek Parliament. Although "a client state" of Britain and the US "for much of its modern existence, [Greece] has secured an equal place at the top tables of NATO and the EU," making the country "a great historical success and a model for its neighbors," as Keridis writes (p. 16). The dictionary includes "more than 200 cross-referenced entries," according to the publisher's website, broadly covering politics, the economy, and culture and updated to include material from the intervening decade since the first edition's publication. A chronology, maps, appendixes, and graphs supplement the text. The appendixes have also been updated to include presidents, prime ministers, and election results from the past decade, and new graphs consider the country's GDP growth in 2020 relative to the EU. Recommended. General readers through faculty. * Choice Reviews *

Dimitris Keridis is a professor of international politics at Panteion University, Greece, and a senior associate at the Karamanlis Foundation in Athens, Greece. In July 2019 he was elected a member of the Greek Parliament for the center-right New Democracy party, representing the northern suburbs of Athens.