Based on a series of interviews, Leviatin presents the experiences of several generations of students and faculty members who studied and taught on the English Department of the oldest university in Central Europe, Charles University. The English Department is best known as the home of the Prague Linguistic Circle.

By focusing on the university, and especially the English Department, Leviatin provides a detailed picture of the ways in which an institution and a community have been affected by war, occupation, ideology, and revolution. As the first book to provide detailed oral histories of the rise and fall of Czechoslovakian communism, it will be of interest to students of contemporary Eastern European social and political history.