BOOK REVIEWS 263 pumped-up, Schwarzenegger-like summary of 110 years of motion picture history with critical analyses of individual flms and auteurs interspersed (his later chapters are far stronger in this regard). Te geneal- ogy of Austrian cinema and Dassanowsky’s command of it are impressive. But the reader is lef wanting for broader conclusions. One of the reasons for this is Dassanowsky’s extremely broad defnition of Austrian cinema. Within the last decade in particular, the feld of national cinema studies has exploded. Authors have published works on Polish, Indian, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, British, Nordic, and many other so-called national or regional cinemas. Te majority of these works address notions of “nation” and “national cinema.” Dassanowsky has chosen a diferent path. His work avoids the jargon that can limit the accessibility of national cinema texts, particularly regarding the thorny theories of nationhood and reception. Tis, simultaneously, is the primary strength and weakness of the text. In his preface, Dassanowsky describes as Austrian any production “created by a majority of Austrian talent” (4). Tis results in some odd inclusions, such as a discussion of Leni Riefenstahl’s Tiefand, which utilized Austrian actors and was partially flmed in Austria (108–9). One gets the sense, however, that the author himself is not convinced of his defnition. He periodically resorts to a concept of Austrian tied to subject and/or style. He feels obliged to include commentary on blockbusters like Te Sound of Music merely because it is about Austria. However, neither cast nor subject fully distinguish Austrian flm. From the advent of sound through the early 1960s, Dassanowsky suggests that imperial epics, operettas, provin- cial comedies, and Heimatflm were particularly Austrian for reasons beyond their locale. He implies that Austrian flm that is too internationalized is less Austrian than flms such as Franz Antel’s Der Bockerer, a flm more “loyal to national trends in location, style, and content” (213). He bemoans the confusion of West German and Austrian flms in the 1960s and 1970s, suggesting features made in Austria for the West German market might somehow be less Austrian because they deviated from the “continuance of any national traditions” (178). On the other hand, Dassanowsky’s malleable defnition allows him to easily fow with the changing currents of Austrian history. He defly handles the 1938–45 Wien-Film era by considering concepts of Austria imposed by the Nazis and responses developed within the Austrian establishment. Tis may result in excessive sympathy for some of the fgures who collaborated with the Nazis, but it prevents him from having to engage in the polemic of whether Nazi control denationalized Austrian cinema. Dassanowsky has made a strong case for the vitality of Austria’s flm culture and Austria’s contribution to motion picture history. He has also inspired us to want to know more about what, precisely, it means to be Austrian. David S. Frey United States Military Academy, West Point Feinberg, Melissa. Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship, and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1950. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. Pp. 275. Te heart of Melissa Feinberg’s study is bracketed by scenes familiar to any student of Czech history—on one end, the moment of exhilaration over the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918–19 and on the other, the execution of the democratic politician Milada Horáková in a Communist prison in 1950. Te author, however, reinscribes these scenes within a much less familiar trajectory, that of Czech feminists’ struggle for women’s rights, which she argues was central to Czech politics. Feminists’ early hopes for the repub- lic were born out in an almost giddy scene in the new National Assembly, in which even conservative politicians vied with one another to acclaim women’s sufrage. At the other end of the temporal spec- trum, Horáková’s death not only heralded Czechoslovak Stalinism, but also marked the demise of liberal feminism. In between, Feinberg traces the shifing fortunes of the Czech feminist movement within the framework of national and international politics, particularly in relation to divergent conceptions of Czech democracy.