River kings by Cat Jarman

River kings by Cat Jarman

River kings by Cat Jarman – the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silks Roads – is an interesting book. I recommend it, but with an important caveat, hence the 2 stars. Horod is a city/fortification in Slavonic languages, she said it was “russian”. Well, russia,…

The picnic by Matthew Longo

The picnic by Matthew Longo

The picnic by Matthew Longo – an escape to freedom and the collapse of the Iron Curtain – was a book I wanted to read because of the great reviews it received and a book I found lacking in analysis. Also, he mentioned Hannah Arendt…

Fatal silence by Robert Katz

Fatal silence by Robert Katz

Fatal silence by Robert Katz was an interesting book, which I would recommend, but which I awarded only 3 stars. Its subtitle is “the Pope, the Resistance and the German occupation of Rome” and the book was mainly about the resistance. Considering that it starts…

Come to This Court and Cry by Linda Kinstler

Come to This Court and Cry by Linda Kinstler

Come to This Court and Cry by Linda Kinstler – How the Holocaust Ends – offers interesting views on pro-war attitudes when it came to Nazi crimes. While researching a well-known case in Latvia regarding the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Herberts Cukurs, Kinstler discovered that…

The Vanquished by Robert Gerwarth

The Vanquished by Robert Gerwarth

The Vanquished by Robert Gerwarth – Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923 – is a non-fiction book on European history. While in the west WWI ended on 11 November 1918, which is now commemorated as Remembrance Day in UK, the fighting did…

The Cheese and The Worms by Carlo Ginzburg

The Cheese and The Worms by Carlo Ginzburg

The Cheese and The Worms by Carlo Ginzburg – The cosmos of a sixteenth-century Miller – is a book first published in 1976. It is one of the first and most important books of microhistory. Microhistory is a mode of historical writing which focuses on…

Imagining the Balkans by Marii︠a︡ Nikolaeva Todorova

Imagining the Balkans by Marii︠a︡ Nikolaeva Todorova

Imagining the Balkans by Marii︠a︡ Nikolaeva Todorova is a short book on Balkanism, a take on Said’s concept of orientalism. It is a fascinating read, which I would recommend to all studying Eastern Europe or European history in general. It was recommended to me and…

Europe; war or peace? by Walter Duranty

Europe; war or peace? by Walter Duranty

Europe; war or peace? by Walter Duranty was published in 1935. It is particularly flawed as it is very biased and manages to get everything that will happen next completely wrong. That is beyond the point, of course, as this is an important primary source…

The pathologisation of homosexuality in fascist Italy by Gabriella Romano

The pathologisation of homosexuality in fascist Italy by Gabriella Romano

The pathologisation of homosexuality in fascist Italy by Gabriella Romano – The Case of ‘G’ – is a short book I read for my studies. Because of the writing and the topic I don’t think it will have a large appeal/interest, so I will say…

Bloc Life by Peter Molloy

Bloc Life by Peter Molloy

Bloc Life by Peter Molloy – Stories from the Lost World of Communism – is a book on three members of the Eastern Bloc – East Germany, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. It showcases how life was in these countries during the Cold War. It presents a…

Approaching an Auschwitz Survivor by Jürgen Matthäus

Approaching an Auschwitz Survivor by Jürgen Matthäus

Approaching an Auschwitz Survivor by Jürgen Matthäus – Holocaust Testimony and its Transformations – is a compilation of 5 essays on the testimony of a Holocaust survivor. Each chapter is written by an expert in Holocaust, Atina Grossmann, Konrad Kwiet, Wendy Lower, Jurgen Matthaus, and…

A History of the Baltic States by Andres Kasekamp

A History of the Baltic States by Andres Kasekamp

A History of the Baltic States by Andres Kasekamp is a very short book considering it reveals the history of 3 countries: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. With only 200 pages on the topic as the rest are notes and so on, the material is very…

An Anti-Communist on the Eastern Front by Vladímir Kovalevski

An Anti-Communist on the Eastern Front by Vladímir Kovalevski

An Anti-Communist on the Eastern Front by Vladímir Kovalevski* is a must read! I loved this book for so many reasons. First of all it offers one of the most unusual perspectives of WWII and a bit of the Spanish civil war. It was written…

Yugoslav Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War by Vjeran Pavlakovic

Yugoslav Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War by Vjeran Pavlakovic

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

How to Manage Your Slaves by Jerry Toner

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…

The World Health Organization: A History by Marcos Cueto

The World Health Organization: A History by Marcos Cueto

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…