227 BOOK REVIEW Lucian Boia: The Romanians and Europe. An astonishing story Editura Humanitas, Bucharest, 2020. 46 p. (80 p.) ISBN 978-973-50-6837-0 [epub] (ISBN 978-973-50-6814-1) In the historiography of the nations along the Danube, there is a long history of comparing the progression of the certain nations with the Western European “civilisation modél”. Thé statés of thé Occidens, which in many aspects set an example, and had already embarked on the path of transformation into a modern nation-state from not later than the dawn of the early modern era, however, had followed a completely different pattern, with such conditions of which were not given to the nations of the East-Central region of Europe. The lack of basic structures, in act, sheds light on the specific model that characterises the history of the Danube nations and in which the history of the Romanians represents a unique variant. In his recent work, Lucian Boia has also applyed a comparative approach to present the defining moments of the history of the Romanian nation, in which he touches on the controversial issue of the origin of Romanian people, as well as the major stages of the evolvement of Romanian language and the embeddedness of various models adapted throughout their history, and last but not least, the topic of national minorities. Lucian Boia, professor at the Faculty of History of the University of Bucharest, has emphasized since the beginning of his career the need for a paradigm shift in the traditional approach to history applied by Romanian historians. Boia first dealt with the topic of regional relations of the premodern and modern Romanian national movements and the history of modern Romanian politics, but later in his research the examination of the issue of Romanian national consciousness and self-assessment have become increasingly important. In one of his best-known works, History and Myth in Romanian Public Consciousness ( Istorie şi mit în conştiinţa românească) through a rigorous critical analysis of national myths, he tried to draw public attention to the outdatedness and backwardness of traditional approaches used in Romanian historical research, as well as on the necessary revision of historical works. Prominent representatives of Romanian historiography, of course, received the writing with suspicion and condemned the author for his scientifically unfounded criticisms and anti-nationalist tone. In the recent decades, several volumes and studies have been published by him in Romanian, French, English and Hungarian language. The work presented below is part of a series of his thematic works intended to a wider audience, in which he sought to enrich the interpretation of Romanian history in a European perspective. The volume contains nine essays, which, despite covering different topics, still fit together coherently. In the first chapter ( Biology or Culture? ) Boia gives a schematic overview of the origins of the Romanian people, presenting the most significant stages of the emergence of the Daco-Roman continuity theory, during which the thesis of the ethnic homogeneity and purely Roman origin of the Romanians was gradually replaced by the possibility of mixing with the Dacians. The author also emphasises that although linguistic heritage and genetic origin are essential components of a nation's history, it is necessary to discuss them separately, and they should not be conflated with each other. In the next chapter ( The Strangeness of the Romanian Language) the author attempts to reveal the most remarkable moments of the evolvement of the Romanian language, with special emphasis on the neologist movements that unfolded in the last third of the 19 th century. Boia does not challenge the essentially Latin origin of the