The russian album
In 1997, the famous Canadian historian compiled, from a photo album, the history of his aristocratic, landowning family in Tsarist Russia. His grandfather, Paul Ignatieff, was Minister of Education under...
History, Contemporary
China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower
Frank Dikötter, the historian of modern China, has a relatively simple method for research. He travels to local and provincial archives to seek access to papers. In Beijing, his request might be referred up...
Gorbachev
Gorbachev continues, even after all these years, to attract interest. He was faced with difficult and uncertain times, with many open fronts that did not rule out a confrontation—even nuclear—between blocs...
Defying Hitler: A Memoir
The author (1907-1999) recounts his memories between 1914 and 1933. The text was found after his death; it had remained unpublished. It describes his childhood perspective of World War I and the clear...
My Russia war or peace?
My Russia, although it refers to the history of Russia, can be read as an essay or a narrative, as it contains biographical data about the author himself. Mikhail explains his ideas about modern Russia to...
Last Witnesses
Svetlana Alexievich was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015. In this novel, she continues the approach she used in her previous work, The War Has No Woman's Face, where she shared the stories of...
Manam
At the beginning of the last century, almost the entire Armenian population of Manam (Turkey) was executed by the Turkish army, and the few who survived were deported to Syria.
Lea, a Canadian...
Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the Worl
The columnist from the Washington Post analyzes the global political situation and describes autocracy as a system in which politicians, regardless of their ideology, focus on maintaining their personal...
The Siege
As the American hostage crisis in Iran boiled into its seventh month in the spring of 1980, six heavily armed gunman barged into the Iranian embassy in London, taking twenty-six hostages. What followed over...
Gambling with Armageddon
Sherwin has written an interesting review of the events surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is in a sense a minute-by-minute summary of what occurred over the period with commentary on previous...