ABSTRACT
In the Middle Ages, much like today, Europe was not one thing to all people. There is plenty of evidence of that in recent history. When U.S. President George W. Bush began the “War on Terror,” he enlisted a “coalition of the willing” that was largely comprised of what he and his secretary of defense called the “New Europe.” 1 Those countries, which are located in what the contributors to this book call East Central and Eastern Europe, were regarded by the American administration as being different, and implicitly better, than the “Old Europe,” which comprised the western part of the continent, and those unwilling to participate fully in such a campaign. France and Germany, stalwarts of the traditional definition of Europe, and part of “Old Europe” in the terminology of the Bush administration, were not amused. 2
