"The impressive international team of contributors has done a good job. The case studies on the introduction of western banking institutions and culture to various eastern European countries, entrepreneurship, privatization of brewing, transmittal and absorption of western norms, and the adjustment of eastern economics to modern western trends are all highly interesting and convincing on the topic of the 'hybridization' process. As the editors sum up in the prologue, 'the nascent capitalism in the region is much less driven from outside, and its local actors are much more active and inventive' than generally thought. Although cultural exchange was often asymmetric, the authors think that it would be a grave simplifi cation to talk about a ‘strong Western’ culture that devours the ‘weak Eastern’ culture'."
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