“Tannenberg & After: Lithuania, Poland, & the Teutonic Order in Search of Immortality” by William L. Urban.
For more than three decades, Urban has devoted himself to the study of Baltic history, publishing, among other volumes, studies of the medieval crusade in the Baltic, in Prussia, in Livonia, and in Samogitia.
This book is conceived as a sequel to these and focuses upon the major states and personalities in the region during the decades from the late fourteenth through the early sixteenth century.
While the peoples and leaders of Poland and Lithuania are important in his story, it is the Knights of the Teutonic Order who figure most prominently (and are the focus of a more recent book by him).
Readers familiar with Urban’s previous scholarship will recognize his approach, which stands firmly in the camp of traditional narrative political history.
As such, it represents a welcome treatment, rich with detail and vivid images, of a region and period not well studied in anglophone scholarship.
