In The Carpathians, Patrice M. Dabrowski narrates how three highland ranges of the Carpathian mountain system were discovered for a broader regional public from about 1870 to 1980. This is a story of how the Tatras, Eastern Carpathians, and Bieszczady Mountains went from being terra incognita to becoming the popular tourist destinations they are today. It is a story of the encounter of Polish and Ukrainian lowlanders with the wild, sublime highlands and with the indigenous highlanders—Górale, Hutsuls, Boikos, and Lemkos—and how these peoples were incorporated into a national narrative as the territories were transformed into a native/national landscape.

Although the Carpathians, essentially a continuation of the Alps, are Central and Eastern Europe's most prominent physical feature, politically they are peripheral. The Carpathians is the first book to deal with the northern slopes more broadly, showing how these discoveries had a direct impact on the various nation-building, state-building, and modernization projects. Dabrowski's history incorporates a unique blend of environmental history, borderlands studies, and the history of tourism and leisure.

Patrice M. Dabrowski has taught and worked at Harvard, Brown, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the University of Vienna. She is currently an associate of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, a member of the Board of Directors of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA), and editor of H-Poland. Dabrowski is the author of three books: Poland: The First Thousand Years (2014), Commemorations and the Shaping of Modern Poland (2004), and The Carpathians: Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine (2021). In 2014 she was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.

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