Dr Miller calls Eastern Europe the ‘terra incognita’ of European urban history—too often ignored by Western scholars. In this highly ambitious study of a huge area stretching from Poland and Lithuania to Hungary and the Czech lands (but not Russia), Miller examines how urbanisation, migration, the Reformation, state building and economic changes impacted on early modern cities and towns, arguing for their transformation from closed, collectivist communities to ones which were much more divided, pluralistic and subject to outside forces. The book is full of valuable information. Miller demonstrates that rates of urbanisation varied widely across Central-Eastern Europe, not only between countries but also between local regions—highest probably in the lands of the Bohemian Crown, with its 420–500 towns housing 30 per cent of population in 1600, to rates of well under 20 per cent in areas of Lithuania and Hungary. As elsewhere in Europe, urban populations grew strongly in the sixteenth century, with some cities, such as Gdansk and Lvov, doubling in size. The region also saw a large increase in new small towns established by landowners. Urban expansion came to an end with the Thirty Years War, which caused disruption and decline across the area (though Miller fails to point out that ports like Gdansk escaped the disaster). Population growth in the sixteenth century was closely linked to migration. Miller's account of native mobility is largely restricted to burgher movement into chartered cities, but he has more interesting material on ethnic migration, important not only for the capital cities and ports but also in seigneurial towns. Foreigners included Armenians, Italians, Scots, Germans, Dutch and, above all, Jews (notably in the towns of Poland-Lithuania—for instance, up to a quarter of the population in Lvov—and in Ottoman Hungary). No less important was land-owner migration and residence in towns from the sixteenth century which contributed to the downgrading of burgher power and the undermining of civic values. Civic cohesion also suffered from internal political conflicts between town councils and citizenry. As in other European cities, financial abuse and the growth of oligarchy were prominent grievances, but they were further inflamed by religious conflicts following the Reformation, with states intervening in urban communities to promote their own religious and political agendas. Though urban autonomy varied across the region, the rise of states from the sixteenth century generally undermined rights of cities—this being especially evident in Bohemia under the Habsburgs. A final chapter analyses the way in which the growth of long-distance agrarian trade during the sixteenth century (notably commerce in grain) boosted the development of seigneurial towns, especially in Poland-Lithuania; such places also acquired manufacturing trades at the expense of the chartered towns. One consequence was that many burghers in the older centres moved over to investment in land and there was an agrarianisation of the urban economy.