"This book examines the history of Prague, emphasizing the city's linguistic, religious, and architectural diversity. The Slavic Přemyslid clan converted to Christianity and fortified Prague Castle in the late ninth century. The city expanded to include Lesser Town and Old Town, and in the thirteenth century, Otakar II encouraged German traders to settle in Prague. A large Jewish community thrived despite periodic antisemitic attacks. In 1346, Emperor Charles IV moved the imperial capital to Prague. He founded the New Town, Prague University, and St. Vitus Cathedral. The execution of Prague University rector Jan Hus, a religious reformer, sparked decades of war. Rudolph II returned the imperial capital to Prague in 1576 and patronized the arts and sciences. The Thirty Years' War began in 1618 with the Second Defenestration of Prague, a Protestant rebellion against Habsburg rulers. During the Counterreformation, Prague gained its Baroque character. The German language dominated until the industrial era when rural Czech speakers migrated to Prague. Czechs took over the city government and built patriotic institutions. A sanitation project replaced the Jewish ghetto with modern boulevards. German-Jewish writers, particularly Franz Kafka, explored themes of bureaucracy and the individual. In 1918, Tomáš G. Masaryk became the president of a new state, Czechoslovakia, and remade Prague as the capital city. Functionalist architecture and experimental art movements thrived. Nazi Germany occupied Prague in 1939, and the majority of Prague's Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. The Communist Party took control in 1948. The Warsaw Pact invaded Prague 1968, ending the Prague Spring reform movement. Dissident writer Václav Havel emerged as the leader of Prague's 1989 Velvet Revolution and served as the president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic"--