Jan 03 2017
Owen Hatherley places Landscapes of Communism at an intersection of several modes: serious but not academic architectural criticism; political and social history, as reflected in a region’s built environment; companion for both travellers and residents; and thoughts on living in cities shaped by different social systems. Hatherley writes early on that he uses the term …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/01/03/landscapes-of-communism-by-owen-hatherley/
May 12 2016
In The Collapse, Mary Elise Sarotte engages in a very close examination of the events in East Germany that led up to the opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and a nearly minute-by-minute analysis of the day itself. Not quite an eyewitness to the events herself, though she is of an age …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/12/the-collapse-by-mary-elise-sarotte/
Jan 09 2015
Last autumn, Berlin celebrated the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Wall, and the peaceful collapse of the Communist order in eastern Germany. Eight Pieces of Empire: A 20-Year Journey Through the Soviet Collapse, by Lawrence Scott Sheets, reminds readers that in other places the end of Communism was not peaceful at all. The …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/09/eight-pieces-of-empire-by-lawrence-scott-sheets/
Dec 23 2014
Adam Zamoyski began Poland: A History as an update and revision to his 1987 book, The Polish Way. He found that history had gotten in the way, and that just revising the older work would not be enough. In the early modern period, the Poles failed spectacularly to build an efficient centralised state structure and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/23/poland-a-history-by-adam-zamoyski/
Dec 18 2014
What I liked most about Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams is how clearly Charles King tells the early stories of Odessa’s founding. For while there had been a small settlement at the site under khans and Ottomans, none of the extant written records gives an unambiguous account of long-term settlement [at …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/18/odessa-by-charles-king/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/03/just-send-me-word-by-orlando-figes/
Oct 22 2011
Read this book years ago, but it was worth rereading. This is mostly told from the Western and American side, chronicling the steps and missteps that American policy makers took to counter the threat of communist expansionism. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan all get their share of due credit, but ironically the President on whose …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2011/10/22/the-cold-war-by-martin-walker/
May 12 2009
Just a few short weeks after the end of World War I on the Western Front, Poland and Soviet Russia started fighting again, skirmishing on their poorly defined border that built into full-scale invasions over the next year. Davies’ book White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-1920 tells this complex story clearly and incisively. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/05/12/white-eagle-red-star-by-norman-davies/
Sep 26 2006
Wish an 876-page biography could be longer? Not often, but definitely with this one. I don’t know the literature well enough to say for sure, but it sure feels like a definitive take on an important figure of 20th century history. William Taubman combines the virtues of journalist and scholar in his biography of Nikita …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/09/26/premature-evaluation-khrushchev-by-william-taubman/
Jul 20 2005
Don’t pick of a copy of Stasiland, by Anna Funder, if you have work to do. I did the first time, and I nearly missed a deadline. I did it again this morning, intending to write a review, and my productivity dropped like a rock again. Consider yourselves warned. It’s not exactly the kind of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2005/07/20/stasiland/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire