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SJPL Picks: Understanding the War in Ukraine

On Feb 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Check these fiction and non-fiction titles to have a deeper understanding of the Ukrainian people, their relationship with Russia, and Russia's government. Selected and curated by SJPL Librarians.

User from San José Public Library

24 items

  • Black Earth

    a Journey Through Ukraine

    Mühling, Jens, 1976-
    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.
    Book, 2019London : The Armchair Traveller, 2019. — 914.7704 Muhling
  • 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…
    Book, 2021Perseus Books Group 2021 — 947.0000
  • Black Square

    Adventures in post-Soviet Ukraine

    Pinkham, Sophie,
    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…
    Book, 2016New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 2016. — 947.7086 Pinkham
  • In Wartime

    Stories From Ukraine

    Judah, Tim, 1962-
    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…
    Book, 2016New York : Tim Duggan Books, [2016] — 947.086 Judah
  • Red Famine

    Stalin's War on Ukraine

    Applebaum, Anne, 1964-
    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…
    Book, 2017New York : Doubleday, [2017] — 947.7084 Applebau
  • Bloodlands

    Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

    Snyder, Timothy
    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…
    Book, 940.5405 Snyder
  • Midnight in Chernobyl

    the Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

    Higginbotham, Adam,
    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…
    Book, 2019New York : Simon & Schuster, 2019. — 363.1799 Higginbo
  • Twilight of Democracy

    the Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

    Applebaum, Anne, 1964-
    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…
    Book, 2020New York : Doubleday, [2020] — 321.9 Applebau
  • 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…
    Book, 2014New York : Doubleday, 2014. — 947.0049 GOLINKIN Golinkin
  • Odessa

    Genius and Death in a City of Dreams

    King, Charles, 1967-
    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…
    Book, 947.72 King
  • Imperial Gamble

    Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

    Kalb, Marvin L,
    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…
    Book, 2015Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution Press, 2015. — 947.7086 Kalb
  • The Future Is History

    How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

    Gessen, Masha,
    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…
    Book, 2017New York : Riverhead Books, 2017. — 947.086 Gessen
  • 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.
    Book, 2016New York : Random House, [2016] — 947.086 Aleksiev
  • 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,
    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…
    Book, 2018New York, NY : Dey St., an imprint of William Morrow, [2018] — 792.8028 CHMERKOV Chmerkov
  • Putin

    His Downfall and Russia's Coming Crash

    Lourie, Richard, 1940-
    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.
    Book, 2017New York : St. Martin's Press/Thomas Dunne Books, [2017]. — 947.0864 PUTIN Lourie
  • All The Kremlin's Men

    Inside The Court of Vladimir Putin

    Zygar, Mikhail, 1981-
    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…
    Book, 2016New York : PublicAffairs, [2016] — 947.0862 Zygar
  • Winter Is Coming

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

    Kasparov, G. K. (Garri Kimovich),
    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…
    Book, 2015New York, NY : Public Affairs, [2015] — 947.0862 Kasparov
  • The New Tsar

    the Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin

    Myers, Steven Lee
    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.
    Book, 2015New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2015] — 947.0862 PUTIN Myers
  • 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…
    Book, 2021Columbus, Ohio : Two Dollar Radio, 2021. — FICTION Pickhart
  • 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
    Book, 2020New York : Doubleday, [2020] — FICTION Reva