Here are 100 books that How Russia Shaped the Modern World fans have personally recommended if you like
How Russia Shaped the Modern World.
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I started a serious study of world history in the early 2000s when the United States-led wave of globalization reshaped the world order. The topic of Russia in world history became especially important under the Vladimir Putin Presidency. Since the 2010s, Russia has made a concerted attempt to revitalize Soviet-era links with countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, many of which are former colonies of Europe. Putin's administration is promoting the geopolitics of a "New World Order," a paradigm they believe will challenge global Western dominance. If we are to craft a coherent Western response and a strong foreign policy, we must understand Russian outreach and relationships in the world.
I love this book because John Darwin takes the history of empires very seriously.
He argues that the present world is the legacy of the great empires that came into existence after the fall of Tamerlane in 1405. He was the last powerful Eurasian ruler who followed in the footsteps of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun. This allowed Asian and European empires such as the Romanovs, Ottomans, the Mughals, the Manchus, the British, the French, the Nazis, and the Soviets to build their empires in space that yoked together Asia and Europe in shared imperial ambitions.
This is an accessible and beautifully written introduction to world history that is well worth your time and effort. It is a great book for a serious book club.
Tamerlane, the Ottomans, the Mughals, the Manchus, the British, the Soviets, the Japanese and the Nazis.
All built empires they hoped would last forever: all were destined to fail. But, as John Darwin shows in his magnificent book, their empire building created the world we know today.
From the death of Tamerlane in 1405, last of the 'world conquerors', to the rise and fall of European empires, and from America's growing colonial presence to the resurgence of India and China as global economic powers, After Tamerlane provides a wonderfully intriguing perspective on the past, present and future of empires.
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I started a serious study of world history in the early 2000s when the United States-led wave of globalization reshaped the world order. The topic of Russia in world history became especially important under the Vladimir Putin Presidency. Since the 2010s, Russia has made a concerted attempt to revitalize Soviet-era links with countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, many of which are former colonies of Europe. Putin's administration is promoting the geopolitics of a "New World Order," a paradigm they believe will challenge global Western dominance. If we are to craft a coherent Western response and a strong foreign policy, we must understand Russian outreach and relationships in the world.
Reading Kate Brown’s book scared me silly, but it was so gripping and so well-written that I couldn’t put it down no matter how hard I tried.
Who knew that the executives and the scientists in the nuclear power industry in the United States and the Soviet Union were so similarly ruthless in their approach to the environment and so careless about the lives of workers? And, who knew that in our quest for the good life or plutopia, we could be so indifferent to the looming ecological dangers that surround us?
Kate Brown’s’ vivid descriptions, details of travels to inaccessible and exotic locales, first-person interviews, and emotional analysis of survivor stories make an enormously complicated subject come alive.
While many transnational histories of the nuclear arms race have been written, Kate Brown provides the first definitive account of the great plutonium disasters of the United States and the Soviet Union.
In Plutopia, Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the extraordinary stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia-the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias--communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Fully employed and medically monitored, the residents of Richland and Ozersk enjoyed all the pleasures of consumer society, while…
I started a serious study of world history in the early 2000s when the United States-led wave of globalization reshaped the world order. The topic of Russia in world history became especially important under the Vladimir Putin Presidency. Since the 2010s, Russia has made a concerted attempt to revitalize Soviet-era links with countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, many of which are former colonies of Europe. Putin's administration is promoting the geopolitics of a "New World Order," a paradigm they believe will challenge global Western dominance. If we are to craft a coherent Western response and a strong foreign policy, we must understand Russian outreach and relationships in the world.
Ilf and Petrov were Soviet-era funny men, comedians, and satirists who dared to tell a few truths about the horrors of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. They also wrote a delightful travel book (One Storied America) about the United States in the 1930s.
Lisa Kirschenbaum takes us behind Ilf and Petrov’s 10,000-mile American road trip. Kirschenbaum introduces us to the many people that Ilf and Petrov met in Depression-era America: immigrant workers, famous filmmakers, poets, and revolutionaries, and analyzes their experiences in the country of their dreams.
Kirschenbaum’s insightful observations about the Soviet Union and the United States during this seminal decade are worth considering today.
In 1935, two Soviet satirists, Ilia Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, undertook a 10,000 mile American road trip from New York to Hollywood and back accompanied only by their guide and chauffeur, a gregarious Russian Jewish immigrant and his American-born, Russian-speaking wife. They immortalized their journey in a popular travelogue that condemned American inequality and racism even as it marvelled at American modernity and efficiency. Lisa Kirschenbaum reconstructs the epic journey of the two Soviet funnymen and their encounters with a vast cast of characters, ranging from famous authors, artists, poets and filmmakers to unemployed hitchhikers and revolutionaries. Using the authors'…
When Annie Thornton, midwife and apprentice witch, falls through time to a 15th-century Yorkshire village with her telepathic cat, Rosamund, she befriends Will and Jack, two soldiers returning from the French Wars. Mistress Meg, Annie’s ancestral aunt living in the 15th century, is…
I started a serious study of world history in the early 2000s when the United States-led wave of globalization reshaped the world order. The topic of Russia in world history became especially important under the Vladimir Putin Presidency. Since the 2010s, Russia has made a concerted attempt to revitalize Soviet-era links with countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, many of which are former colonies of Europe. Putin's administration is promoting the geopolitics of a "New World Order," a paradigm they believe will challenge global Western dominance. If we are to craft a coherent Western response and a strong foreign policy, we must understand Russian outreach and relationships in the world.
Did young communists fall in love, conduct passionate affairs under the noses of disapproving commissars, and break every revolutionary rule in the book?
The topic seemed so fascinating that I read Elizabeth McGuire’s book in one sitting. She took me on an exciting journey with a generation of young Chinese revolutionaries who were swept up in the maelstrom of the Russian revolution. I learned how they were seduced by the Russian language, how they devoured great works of Russian literature, and the writings of revolutionaries, terrorists, and anarchists.
The stories of Chinese students as translators, educators, and aspiring revolutionaries, as well as their experiences, love affairs, and adventures in the Soviet Union, really gripped my imagination. This was a novel way of understanding Russia's special friendship and enmity with China.
Beginning in the 1920s thousands of Chinese revolutionaries set out for Soviet Russia. Once there, they studied Russian language and experienced Soviet communism, but many also fell in love, got married, or had children. In this they were similar to other people from all over the world who were enchanted by the Russian Revolution and lured to Moscow by it.
The Chinese who traveled to live and study in Moscow in a steady stream over the course of decades were a key human interface between the two revolutions, and their stories show the emotional investment backing ideological, economic, and political…
My passion for the topic of migration was kind of overdetermined, given that my grandparents were refugees, my father is an immigrant, and I have been on the move quite a bit myself. It might not have been a conscious choice to study something so close to home, but the more I think about it, the less likely it seems that this was all a coincidence. This personal dimension might also explain my choice of books, which all combine scholarly-analytics with deeply human perspectives on the topic of migration.
Yuri Slezkine’s classic book on the history of Russian Jewry is not a work of migration history strictly speaking. But there is no Jewish history without migration, and Slezkine shows us, among many other things, how Russian Jews ended up in the US, Israel, and the Soviet Union, representing three ideological choices—liberalism, nationalism, and communism.
I read this book back in university, and few works, if any, have had such a profound impact on my historical thinking.
This masterwork of interpretative history begins with a bold declaration: "The Modern Age is the Jewish Age, and the twentieth century, in particular, is the Jewish Century." The assertion is, of course, metaphorical. But it drives home Yuri Slezkine's provocative thesis: Jews have adapted to the modern world so well that they have become models of what it means to be modern. While focusing on the drama of the Russian Jews, including emigres and their offspring, The Jewish Century is also an incredibly original account of the many faces of modernity-nationalism, socialism, capitalism, and liberalism. Rich in its insight, sweeping…
I was a law school graduate heading for my first job when, unable to think of anything better to do with my last afternoon in London, I wandered through the First World War galleries of the Imperial War Museum. I was hypnotized by a slide show of Great War propaganda posters, stunned by their clever viciousness in getting men to volunteer and wives and girlfriends to pressure them. Increasingly fascinated, I started reading about the war and its aftermath. After several years of this, I quit my job at a law firm and went back to school to become a professor. And here I am.
David Reynolds is simply one of the smartest and most original historians operating today. Do we imagine that no one thought much about the poems of Wilfred Owen until the 1960s? Do we think about how important the fiftieth anniversary of the Somme was for the politics of Ireland? This book is packed full of perceptive and original insights about the Great War’s very long legacy.
One of the most violent conflicts in the history of civilization, World War I has been strangely forgotten in American culture. It has become a ghostly war fought in a haze of memory, often seen merely as a distant preamble to World War II. In The Long Shadow critically acclaimed historian David Reynolds seeks to broaden our vision by assessing the impact of the Great War across the twentieth century. He shows how events in that turbulent century-particularly World War II, the Cold War, and the collapse of Communism-shaped and reshaped attitudes to 1914-18.
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassion…
I love cities and I teach about them. I was born in the capital of Sofia, Bulgaria, and landed in the US (mostly by chance) in 1993. Spent most of my professional life in US academia (Michigan, Virginia Tech, Harvard, Maryland, and now Georgia). I never stopped wondering how cities change and why American cities look and function so differently than European cities. So, I wrote a few books about cities, includingIron Curtains; Gates, Suburbs and Privatization of Space, which is about changes in East European Cities after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
A modern classic! A fascinating analysis of arts, culture, literature, and social and urban change. A breathtaking read of Goethe’s Faust to Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Undergroundand a sharp analysis of what Hausmann’s Parisian boulevards have to do with the prospects of pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg and the highways of mid-century New York. Fantastic chapters on Karl Marx (from whom the title of the book is borrowed) and Charles Baudelaire. Written with poetic perfection!
"A bubbling caldron of ideas . . . Enlightening and valuable." Mervyn Jones, New Statesman.
The political and social revolutions of the nineteenth century, the pivotal writings of Goethe, Marx, Dostoevsky, and others, and the creation of new environments to replace the old all have thrust us into a modern world of contradictions and ambiguities. In this fascinating book, Marshall Berman examines the clash of classes, histories, and cultures, and ponders our prospects for coming to terms with the relationship between a liberating social and philosophical idealism and a complex, bureaucratic materialism.
I am a retired university professor. My research, in which I am still actively engaged, deals with decision-making under deep uncertainty: how to make a decision, or design a project, or plan an operation when major relevant factors are unknown or highly uncertain. I developed a decision theory called info-gap theory that grapples with this challenge, and is applied around the world in many fields, including engineering design, economics, medicine, national security, biological conservation, and more.
The world is complicated and confusing, but Harari organizes this complexity into 21 issues covering such diverse topics as liberty, community, war, ignorance, and meaning.
The book is a collection of self-standing essays that can be read independently. The prevailing message is that we can understand the world in which we live, though, at the same time, we cannot always make reliable decisions today or confidently predict the future because we fundamentally don't know what's going on.
Finally, the book offers a warning: modern technology, coupled with artificial intelligence, may challenge human freedom if we lose control of the powerful and evolving forces of hi-tech and AI.
In twenty-one bite-sized lessons, Yuval Noah Harari explores what it means to be human in an age of bewilderment.
How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war, ecological cataclysms and technological disruptions? What can we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? What should we teach our children?
The world-renowned historian and intellectual Yuval Noah Harari takes us on a thrilling journey through today's most urgent issues. The golden thread running through his exhilarating new book is the challenge of maintaining our collective and individual focus in the face of constant…
I’m a journalist in Edmonton, Canada, who covered former premier Jason Kenney’s rise through Alberta politics, in which he tapped into the populist zeitgeist of Donald Trump and Brexit, and his eventual implosion. I have a newsletter on Substack, "The Orchard," where I cover the intersection of politics, the media, and corporate power. Through my journalism, I’ve developed a keen interest in this age of mass discontent we find ourselves in, with right-wing political and economic elites promising to blow up the entire system they embody while feckless liberal politicians seek to tinker around the edges to make the established order more palatable.
In this book, Pankaj Mishraj describes how the failures of secular modernity led to the rise of revanchist movements seeking to provide those left behind with a common sense of purpose.
I greatly appreciated the international scope of Mishraj’s analysis, with which he reveals how the growth of reactionary, theocratic, and xenophobic populist politics across the globe are manifestations of the same sense of malaise.
He convincingly argues that these tensions are as old as modernity itself. Rather than engaging strictly with the same old historical and sociological sources to make his case, the author refreshingly engages the poets and novelists of the era he describes.
'The kind of vision the world needs right now...Pankaj Mishra shouldn't stop thinking' Christopher de Bellaigue, Financial Times
'This is the most astonishing, convincing, and disturbing book I've read in years' Joe Sacco
'Urgent, profound and extraordinarily timely' John Banville
How can we explain the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world - from American 'shooters' and ISIS to Trump, from a rise in vengeful nationalism across the world to racism and misogyny on social media? In Age of…
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
I have been a professor of politics and law for decades, first at Harvard and then Oxford, and so on; I spent these decades trying to understand what makes democracy work. I think we’ve been focusing on the wrong things, and as a political and legal theorist, I want to help us think about a better way forward—one we can carve for ourselves every day of our lives.
I find Sam’s book imperative: love it or hate it, praise it or criticize it; Sam gets us to think seriously about culture and identity as he opens an important debate for our complex democracies to engage with. I taught with Sam at Harvard and never ceased to be amazed by his profound understanding of the world. We may disagree with him, but he certainly gets us talking.
As people increasingly define themselves by ethnicity or religion, the West will find itself more and more at odds with non-western civilizations that reject its ideals of democracy, human rights, liberty, the rule of law, and the separation of the church and the state. Huntington feels that the fundamental source of conflict in the post-Cold War period will not be primarily ideological or economic, but cultural. Picturing a future of accelerated conflict and increasingly "de-westernized" international relations, he argues for greater understanding of non-western civilizations and offers strategies for maximizing western influence, by promoting co-operative relations with Russia and Japan,…
