"Alexievich has not merely given us a work of documentation but of excavation, of revealed meaning. It is hard to imagine how anyone in the West will read these cantos of loss and not feel a sense of communion, of a shared humanity in the face of this horror . . . The stories collected here are not only haunting but illuminating."—Andrew Meier, The Nation

“Ms. Chamberlain, a British historian and the author of Motherland: A Philosophical History of Russia, brings these forgotten figures back to life with great skill and sympathy, reconstructing their intellectual milieu and making a strong case for the importance of their banishment as a turning point in the road from revolution to Communist tyranny.”—William Grimes, The New York Times

"The everyday lives of Russians between the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the death of Josef Stalin in 1953 is the subject of Orlando Figes' illuminating and profoundly moving new book. Filled with the stories of hundreds of survivors, many of which make for desperately painful reading, The Whisperers offers the most thorough account so far of what it meant to live under Soviet totalitarianism."—Douglas Smith, The Seattle Times

“A concise and powerful overview of one of the twentieth century’s most influential people.”—Michael Lorah, Newsarama.com

"With a keen eye for telling detail, a concern for the choices of individual leaders, and careful judgments, Leffler generates a narrative that carries the reader along as it develops important new ideas. This landmark study transcends many of our standard arguments about the Cold War to focus on what it was really about. Driving much of the maneuvering for security and advantage was the struggle over which political system could meet people’s needs and produce a better society."—Robert Jervis, Columbia University

"Most empires, Longworth argues, rise and fall, never to rise again. But Russia has seen four major empires in the past nine centuries, each rising from the ashes of the other. Even in pre-history, the nation saw uncommonly large populations in civilized centers, such as the 6,000-year-old Talyanky site, which was home to more than 10,000 people . . . the command of the last empire . . . was meant to be absolute; when communism was pressed on the native Chukchi people of the farnorth, they resisted, reasonably, saying that it would not increase the number of walruses. Empire is a distant memory among younger Russians. But, as Longworth observes at the close of this useful survey, 'nothing is immutable,' and if history is a guide, Russia's empire will rise again."—Kirkus Reviews

"Ivan's War combines, quite effectively, painstaking historical reconstruction and sympathetic projection. Ms. Merridale, proceeding from campaign to campaign, describes from the top down and from the bottom up. She provides a coherent picture of the tactical decisions and industrial adjustments that altered the course of the war, and at the same time focuses on how such changes were reflected in the day-to-day experiences and feelings of the troops on the ground . . . She is unsparing in her account of the terror unleashed on German civilians, but scathing about the world to which the veterans returned."—William Grimes, The New York Times

“Communist Eastern Europe has not usually been seen as a subject for Proustian reflection . . . But in A Book of Memories, Peter Nadas, one of Hungary's pre-eminent literary figures, has accomplished a remarkably interesting feat: he has transposed the novel of consciousness to the Socialist universe, and closed the gap between prewar modernism (inflected here by post-modern psychoanalysis) and Eastern Europe.”—Eva Hoffman, The New York Times Book Review

"Siljak presents a history of Vera Zasulich . . . in an engaging, fluid style. Readers receive a full portrait of a woman who wanted nothing more than to become a martyr for her cause but instead became a national symbol and celebrity, praised by members of all social classes in Russia and known worldwide."—Library Journal

Now appearing in an FSG Classic edition, and featuring a new introduction by Katherine Shonk, this is the only authorized English translation of Solzhenitsyn's contemporary masterpiece.

Ian Armour's authoritative history of Eastern Europe spans the turbulent years from 1740 to 1918. It traces how the big powers, most notably the Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian Empires, jostled for control in the region and examines the roots of nationalism which were nurtured by harrowing poverty and social turmoil.