History Books

From former NPR Moscow correspondent Gregory Feifer comes an incisive portrait that draws on vivid personal stories of the forces that have shaped the Russian character for centuries-and continue to do so today.

A New York Times bestseller, this definitive history of Ukraine is “an exemplary account of Europe’s least-known large country” (Wall Street Journal).

The first history of the epic defeat of Napoleon's empire told from the Russian perspective.

The Romanovs ruled a sixth of the world’s surface for three centuries. How did one family turn a war-ruined principality into the world’s greatest empire? And how did they lose it all?

First published in 1963, this unique and pioneering anthology contains over sixty selections from the finest of Russia’s medieval authors, much of the material published in this anthology has never before been available in English. 

A tumultuous, heartrending, true story of the Romanovs—at once an intimate portrait of Russia's last royal family and a gripping account of its undoing.

A glimpse into the everyday life of a field scientist/conservationist, Jonathan C. Slaght testifies to the determination and creativity essential to scientific advancement and serves as reminder of the beauty, strength, and vulnerability of nature.

A travel guide through one of the best minds of the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg’s journals are more tour de force than diaries, charting his poetry, political antics, and high-profile encounters behind the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War.

The Apartment: A Century of Russian History explains the true history of 20th-century Russia through the story of a Moscow family and their apartment. Readers witness how each generation lived alongside larger social and political changes in Russia.

Catherine the Great modernized Russia through the ardent promotion of art and culture, founding the Hermitage and expanding both social and geographic borders.

From the Mongol hordes of the 13th century, the autocratic fists of successive tsars, to the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia's re-emergence as a superpower.

Revolution 1989 is an authoritative account, by journalist Victor Sebestyen, of the few months, and the few ordinary people, that brought down the Soviet Union, and changed the world forever.