New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies
Society & Culture
An astonishing deep dive into the war in Ukraine - from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War - and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime - and Russia itself - at risk of destruction. Why?
Drawing on over 25 years' experience working in Moscow, journalist Owen Matthews provides the answer. He takes us inside the Covid bubble where Putin conceived his invasion plans in a fog of nationalist fantasy and bad information - and into the inner circle around Ukrainian president and unexpected war hero Volodimir Zelensky. Using the testimonies of captured Russian conscripts and the last journalists in besieged Mariupol, Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin's War Against Ukraine (Mudlark, 2022) uncovers what unfolded on the ground, while interviews with Putin's close network pull back the curtain on the decision-making process inside the Kremlin. With its panoramic view, Overreach is the authoritative, unmissable account of the conflict that shocked Europe to its core.
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Elena Kochetkova, "The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology" (MIT Press, 2024)
Victoria Khiterer, "Jewish City Or Inferno of Russian Israel?: A History of the Jews in Kiev Before February 1917" (Academic Studies Press, 2017)
Tracey German, "Russia and the Changing Character of Conflict" (Cambria Press, 2023)
Yaroslav Trofimov, "Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence" (Penguin, 2024)
Choi Chatterjee, "Russia in World History: A Transnational Approach" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Julia A. Cassiday, "Russian Style: Performing Gender, Power, and Putinism" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
Katya Hokanson, "A Woman's Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
Per Högselius and Achim Klüppelberg, "The Soviet Nuclear Archipelago: A Historical Geography of Atomic-Powered Communism" (CEU Press, 2023)
Lawrence Freedman, "Modern Warfare: Lessons from Ukraine" (Penguin, 2023)
Sean Griffin, "The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Rustam Alexander, "Gay Lives and ‘Aversion Therapy’ in Brezhnev’s Russia, 1964–1982" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
"The US Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV" (Indiana UP, 2022)
Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, "Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Illia Ponomarenko, "I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Jen Stout, "Night Train to Odesa: Covering the Human Cost of Russia's War" (Polygon, 2024)
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, "Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State" (Stanford UP, 2024)
Asif Siddiqi on Rockets, Prisons, Pop Songs, and So Much More
Steven Ujifusa, "The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I" (HarperCollins, 2023)
Egor Lazarev, "State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Maria Snegovaya, "When Left Moves Right: The Decline of the Left and the Rise of the Populist Right in Postcommunist Europe" (Oxford UP, 2024)
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