SJPL Picks: Understanding the War in UkraineLike this list

24 items

• Black Earth

  a Journey Through Ukraine

  Mühling, Jens, 1976-

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  The author takes readers across the country during its recent political crises: the ousting of former president Viktor Yanukovych and the Russian annexation of Crimea.

• The Gates of Europe

  A History of Ukraine

  Plokhy, Serhii

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  As Ukraine is embroiled in an ongoing struggle with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence, celebrated historian Serhii Plokhy explains that today’s crisis is a case of history repeating itself: the Ukrainian…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Black Square

  Adventures in post-Soviet Ukraine

  Pinkham, Sophie,

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  This captivating and original narrative blends politics, history, and reportage in a street-level account of a vexing and troubled region. In the tradition of Elif Batuman and Ian Frazier, Black Square presents an evocative, multidimensional…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• In Wartime

  Stories From Ukraine

  Judah, Tim, 1962-

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  Ever since Ukraine's violent 2014 revolution, followed by Russia's annexation of Crimea, the country has been at war. Misinformation reigns, more than two million people have been displaced, and Ukrainians fight one another on a second front--the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Red Famine

  Stalin's War on Ukraine

  Applebaum, Anne, 1964-

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  In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization--in effect a second Russian revolution--which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Bloodlands

  Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

  Snyder, Timothy

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  The author offers a groundbreaking investigation of Europe's killing fields and a sustained explanation of the motives and methods of both Hitler and Stalin. He anchors the history of Hitler's Holocaust and Stalin's Terror in their time and place…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Midnight in Chernobyl

  the Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

  Higginbotham, Adam,

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  Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering one of the twentieth century’s greatest disasters. In the thirty years since then, Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Twilight of Democracy

  the Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

  Applebaum, Anne, 1964-

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  In Twilight of Democracy, prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum argues that we should not be surprised by this change: There is an inherent appeal to political systems with radically simple beliefs, especially when they benefit the loyal to the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka

  a Memoir

  Golinkin, Lev,

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  This is the vivid, darkly comic, and poignant story of Lev Golinkin in the confusing and often chilling final decade of the Soviet Union, and "of a Jewish family’s escape from oppression ... whose drama, hope and heartache Mr. Golinkin captures…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Odessa

  Genius and Death in a City of Dreams

  King, Charles, 1967-

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  Drawing on a wealth of original sources and offering the first detailed account of the destruction of the city's Jewish community during the Second World War, Charles King's Odessa is both history and elegy―a vivid chronicle of a multicultural city…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Imperial Gamble

  Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

  Kalb, Marvin L,

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  The world was stunned when Vladimir Putin invaded and seized Crimea in March 2014. In the weeks that followed, pro-Russian rebels staged uprisings in southeastern Ukraine. The United States and its Western allies immediately imposed strict sanctions…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Future Is History

  How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

  Gessen, Masha,

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  The author follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Secondhand Time

  the Last of the Soviets

  Aleksievich, Svetlana, 1948-

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  Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive documentary style, Secondhand Time is a monument to the collapse of the USSR, charting the decline of Soviet culture and speculating on what will rise from the ashes of communism.

• I'll Never Change My Name

  An Immigrant's American Dream From Ukraine to the U.S.A. to Dancing With the Stars

  Chmerkovskiy, Valentin,

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  For the first time, Val looks back at his childhood in Odessa, Ukraine, and his Jewish family’s immigration to the United States—including what it was like to grow up as a stranger desperate to fit into a different culture, how he worked to become a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Putin

  His Downfall and Russia's Coming Crash

  Lourie, Richard, 1940-

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  For reasons that are made clear in this book, Putin's Russia will collapse just as Imperial Russia did in 1917 and as Soviet Russia did in 1991. The only questions are when, how violently, and with how much peril for the world.

• All The Kremlin's Men

  Inside The Court of Vladimir Putin

  Zygar, Mikhail, 1981-

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  Charting the transformation of Vladimir Putin from a passionate fan of the West and a liberal reformer into a hurt and introverted outcast, All the Kremlin's Men is a historical detective story, full of intrigue and conspiracy. This is the story of…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Winter Is Coming

  Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped

  Kasparov, G. K. (Garri Kimovich),

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  The ascension of Vladimir Putin-a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB-to the presidency of Russia in 1999 was a strong signal that the country was headed away from democracy. Yet in the intervening years-as America and the world's other leading…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The New Tsar

  the Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin

  Myers, Steven Lee

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  The epic tale of the rise to power of Russia's current president--of his emergence from shrouded obscurity and deprivation to become one of the most consequential and complicated leaders in modern history.

• I Will Die in a Foreign Land

  a Novel

  Pickhart, Kalani,

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  in November 2013, thousands of Ukrainian citizens gathered at Independence Square in Kyiv to protest then-President Yanukovych's failure to sign a referendum with the European Union, opting instead to forge a closer alliance with President Vladimir…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Good Citizens Need Not Fear

  Reva, Maria,

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  A tale of disparate characters all linked by their connection to a crumbling apartment building in Soviet-era Ukraine as the country is roiled by the transition to capitalism