A compelling historico-psychological work delineating how the West should respond to Russia going forward.
An incisive exploration of “how and why Russia has returned to the world stage”—and the prospects for the future.
Casting back into the country’s history, Stent, former national intelligence officer and current director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian, East European Studies at Georgetown (The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the 21st Century, 2014), offers a deeply informed look at why Russia, directed by President Vladimir Putin, persists in behaving in what the West regards as an exceedingly maddening, paranoid, and often aggressive manner. After “a decade of political chaos and an economic meltdown,” Russia went from being a regional power, according to Barack Obama, to one whose reach “is now clearly global.” Among the many elements that demonstrate how Russia has established a new geopolitical identity: its triumphal staging of the Winter Olympics in 2014 and, later, the 2018 World Cup; the annexation of Crimea; launching of war in southeastern Ukraine; and edging out the United States as the new power broker in the Middle East, specifically in backing Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad in his civil war (“Russia’s first military foray outside the former Soviet borders since the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan”). Looking at the country’s past glories and grievances under a series of eccentric, occasionally dangerous czars in order to underscore its unique place in the world and sense of exceptionalism, Stent insightfully dissects its prickly relationship with both the U.S. and many European countries, who had hoped Russia post–Soviet Union would become “a responsible stake-holder in a post–Cold War, rules-based liberal international order [the West] had created.” The author also considers Russia’s “wary” relationships with neighbors China, Japan, and others. As she astutely notes, Russia has always defined itself in opposition to the West, and “isolating [it] and refusing to deal with it, however appealing that may appear to some, is not an option.”
A compelling historico-psychological work delineating how the West should respond to Russia going forward.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4555-3302-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
