The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the Struggle for Russia by Angus Roxburgh, 2012

It is probably most appropriate to post this review on the day of the re-inauguration of Vladimir Putin, re-elected as a President of Russian Federation for the third time. As much as the book is not exactly about Putin, he is still an axis all the events described in the book are pivoting around.

This is a fascinating modern history book covering last 12 years of developing relations between Russia and the West. It's a history of failed attempts, misunderstandings, tricks and backstabbing. I will afford only one quote that may sum up the essence of the narrative (p. 251-252, hard cover edition):

"... the failure of Russia and the West to understand one another and to take one another's concerns and fears into account. Bush preached and lectured. Putin raged and menaced. America said that Russia must give up its 'sphere of influence' in its 'near abroad'. Russia said that America should stop acting as if it ruled the world. Bush accused Putin of communist-style authoritarianism. Putin accused Bush of Cold War thinking. Both were right."

If you were thinking whether the Cold War was over, of if it had ever happened, this book is brilliant material to explore the topic from authors first hand account, as well as from the interviews granted by the very participants of the historical events of 1999 to the date.

Extremely highly recommended: The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the Struggle for Russia.

The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David Hoffman

It was in the April of the 1979 when we, the Urals Polytechnical Institute students, learnt that people started dying from unconfirmed cause in our city of Sverdlovsk. The deaths have not been officially confirmed in the first place, and the following explanation of the pulmonary type anthrax related deaths with tainted meat did not make any sense. Nevertheless the cat was out of the bag, and the youth in their twenties ran to the nearest pharmacy for antibiotics. Penicillin was available over the counter, I administered myself a week course and methodically finished up a bottle of cherry coloured pills.

This is how the opening pages of the book brought me about 30 years back. The accident, blamed by most on the leak from the semi-military R&D compound specialized in bio-weapons located amidst residential area, and by some on the biological attack by unknown enemy, sets the tone to the little discussed layer of the arm race.

While the world seems to be alarmed by the nuclear threat, the author brings together the facts making the reader think that at least one big country is busy working out the unbeatable creepy and literally viral weaponry. The author bases investigative part of the book on interviews with former leading Soviet bio-chemists and genetic-engineers who moved to the West, as well as on the results of International commissions having placed visits to supposedly decommissioned bio-facilities across former Soviet republics.

Great deal of the book is concerned with Reagan-Gorbachev relations. The author was a journalist on an assignment to cover the topic at the time, and it's been covered well. David Hoffman later worked in Russia. This itself makes the book fairly balanced, taking interests of the parties on both sides of the iron curtain into prospective.

If you are interested in US and/or Russia politics, Cold War, arm race, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy is definitely for you. Highly recommended.

Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene

The book collides two ideas, or concepts, or religions - the Communism and Christianity in a form of an ongoing anecdote.

The Catholic priest and the Communist mayor, both fallen out of favour, one of his Superior's, another one of the electorate - taking it on the road in the same car. The beauty of the book is in that it is framed into a rich background of Cervantes's novel Don Quixote.

The Monsignor takes himself as a descendant of Don Quixote, and the Mayor agrees to be called Sancho. Even their car is named Rocinante after the Quixote's horse. Of course they bump into all kinds of windmills as they go along. But most interesting to me are the dialogs where the characters check their ideals against those of their adversary.

They both reveal some doubts and some intolerance, but some tolerance as well. The case of red wine they carried in the back of their Rocinante could sometimes be a helper, sometimes a topic of discussion and once a blasphemy.

Whether you prefer hammer and sickle or the cross, you get to enjoy the Monsignor Quixote.

Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America by Ann Coulter

Whether you like Ann Coulter or not, you can't be bored by what she may say or write.

In Demonic Ann Coulter applies the "Crowd Theory" of Le Bon to the Democratic Party of the USA and to liberals in general. I am sorry to say that many assertions in the book don't hold water.

For example, Ms. Coulter describes German Nazi movement as one of "mob", but separately states that Christians don't act like "mob". In fact, prior to the Second World War most of German citizens identified themselves as Christians. That included Adolf Hitler. Christians behaved like mob at some other occasions too - Children's Crusade, or Medieval Inquisition for example.

In the last chapter preceding the closing slogan "Overreact!" (although slogans, as we learned, is a mob thing), Ms. Coulter brings in the events of the Russian history of the early XX Century, and she gets it all wrong: the dates, the facts, and of course, the conclusion. The "Bloody Sunday" of January 1905 was not mob smashing by the Czar, but rather knee-jerk reaction of the Imperial Guard, who used fire again peaceful demonstrators. This was followed by the peasant revolts across the country, by the mutiny in the Russian Navy while the country was at war with Japan, until it finally ended with First-ever Russian Constitution and opening of the State Duma, first Russian Parliament.

The Revolution of 1910 is Ms. Coulter's fantasy, it has never happened.

The book is laced with childish personal attacks that defeat the purpose of the book and are nothing but part of the mob arsenal. Aren't they? Ms. Coulter calls film producer Michael Moore "fat disgusting pig" and suggests that Jane Fonda's main accomplishment would be her silicon implants. I personally prefer the movie They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Still I think the lesson on French Revolution is absolutely hilarious, and a must read. Actually, I may suggest Ms. Coulter to drop what she is doing and to get into business of writing history text books. Students need this kind of reading - entertaining, witty, forcing full attention and educational. All in one bottle. Somebody would have to check facts though.

Again, whether you like Ann Coulter or not, I can recommend Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America. Great read!

We The Living by Ayn Rand

Every civil war is different in terms of its place, its timing, the number of people involved. What is the same, it's always about people hurting people, about one forcing their will on others, about lost hopes, lost lives, lost generations.

When I was reading We The Living I unintentionally compared it to Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. Both books tell personal stories, one of a woman and another one of a man, happening during Russian Civil War of the Twentieth Century. Without comparing literature merits, one can say the books appeal to the human being inside the reader.

We The Living claims its own place among Western readers. As for Russians, while many books mostly unknown inside iron curtain had become public and popular in 1990's, it stayed in the shadow until lately. It was translated and published in Russian, and I suggest it reads better in Russian, Ayn Rand's native language.

Highly recommended, We the Living (75th Anniversary Deluxe Edition).

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary

The book, written as a diary during last few weeks of the Second World War, is attributed by many to Marta Hiller (1911 - 2001).

As many who had read the book rightfully point out, the book is about the Soviet Army raping female civilians in fallen Berlin of 1945. It is, but it is not.

The book is about "swindlers acting like kings, sending the fools off to fight with the flags and lies." It is about the men who go to war and leave their women behind. And about women becoming a trophy of the winning army.

It's about patriotism, about the person who decided to share her fate with that of her people and living with the consequences of the decision.

It's about the live, the means of survival one person can adjust to. Highly recommended.

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary

The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II by Andrew Nagorski

Bad news first: the book does not have the operational details of the Battle of Moscow in pure military terms. Great news: the book has a lot more.

Mr. Nagorski makes a point that the Battle was not finished in January 1942, but continued until 1943 pulling resources from both parties involved. Therefore the book covers events and characters involved in much broader terms and at various levels of scrutiny.

The author compares biographies of Hitler and Stalin, looking for the similarities, and analyzing the psychology of the war as a collision of characters. The author compares strategic decisions, the good ones, the bad ones and obvious blunders made by both sides, and how they led to the final tall in terms of the war results and massive human losses of both nations.

He analyzes the records left by the historians and memoirs of the participants on both sides to build big picture of what had happened. But he also offers anecdotal stories of Russian and German regular folks like me and you who found themselves in the mutual slaughter. There are stories of young communists trained to be spies, and of a general who committed suicide to avoid capture, the excerpts from the letters German soldiers sent home to their Hausfraus, and a story of the group of captured German soldiers lined up by the side of the road in their summer uniform in the midst of Cruel Russian winter, falling on the ground one by one and literally freezing to death.

The author takes on ugly sides of war (as if there was a nice side), omitted in the Soviets history textbooks. He tells the story of Moscowites fleeing the Capital in panic and looting, the stories of the Soviet troops set behind the front line of their compatriots and shooting those trying to retreat.

Great book, highly recommended. Buy The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II from Amazon.