A Message from Ukraine by Volodymyr Zelensky is a short book containing 16 speeches, personally selected by him. These are war speeches as the russians went to war against Ukraine in 2014, years before the full-scale invasion of 2022. The speeches start from 2019, with…
Yugoslav Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War by Vjeran Pavlakovic is a short, but really good book on the Yugoslavia’s involvement in the Spanish civil war. The numbers were not high, as about 2,000 volunteers joined, but the book covers what happened in a very…
How to Manage Your Slaves by Jerry Toner or, it’s full title: How to Manage Your Slaves by Marcus Sidonius Falx by Jerry Toner, is a fun book. Toner wrote the book in “collaboration” with Falx. In fact, it’s an interpretation of what a Roman…
A Prisoner of Stalin by Christian Huber – The Chilling Story of a Luftwaffe Pilot Shot Down and Captured on the Eastern Front* is an interesting book, a primary source from two points of view, a primary source for Ehlert’s life that includes him in…
The World Health Organization: A History by Marcos Cueto, Theodore Brown, and Elizabeth Fee is a book on the history of WHO. I don’t have a lot to say besides that I was annoyed by their views on Eastern Europe – the whole “buffer” between…
Hitler’s Henchmen by Helmut Ortner* – Nazi Executioners and How They Escaped Justice After WWII was shocking to read. Not because of what the Nazis did, that was to be expected, but what happened in Germany ever since. He is highly critical of the German…
The Nazi Death Camps. Then and Now*, edited by Winston Ramsey, is a fantastic reference book for anyone who is studying about or interested in Nazi Germany. The National Socialist Party was in power in Germany for 12 years and in this time they opened…
La propaganda franquista durante la Guerra Civil by María-del-Pilar Rodríguez-Hernandez is a book, in Spanish, about propaganda during the Spanish Civil War. It is a short book, well structured, touching on different aspects of propaganda. The book starts with a presentation of what propaganda is…
Franco’s Internationalists by David Brydan – Social Experts and Spain’s Search for Legitimacy – is a book by a teacher at King’s College London, who will supervise me next year. I was, obviously, very excited to read the book. It covers the period of the…
Surviving Katyn by Jane Rogoyska – Stalin’s Polish Massacre and the Search for Truth – is a fantastic book, so well researched into the deaths of 21,857 Polish officers killed by NKVD under the orders of Stalin. Reading about the author I was surprised to…
A Concise History of Italy by Christopher Duggan – Cambridge Concise Histories is a good book which I enjoyed. It’s focused on the modern history a bit too much for my taste, hence the 4 stars instead of 5. For example, the period between 400…
A Judge in Auschwitz by Kevin Prenger* – Konrad Morgen’s Crusade Against SS Corruption and ‘Illegal’ Murder – must be one of the best books I read this year. Unlike most of the books about Auschwitz or the German genocide of Jews, which deal with…
Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder – Europe between Hitler and Stalin – is a fantastic book which compares what happened during the Nazi occupation and during the Soviet occupation in the countries between Germany and Russia: Poland and the Blatic States, also Ukraine. He ends the…
Fighting For Franco by Judith Keene – International Volunteers in Nationalist Spain During the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39 – is the second 1 star book I read this month, which is so unusual for me. I was interested in this book because there is little…
Red Famine by Anne Applebaum – Stalin’s War on Ukraine – is a must read because not only sheds light on a less know part of European history, the implications of what happened at that point and how the west reacted are still with us…
Winter Is Coming by Garry Kasparov – Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped is a must read book, for many reasons. This is not a book only about Putin, but about what the west did while Putin was…