By the Second Spring

Seven Lives and One Year of the War in Ukraine

De: Danielle Leavitt

Narrado por: Natalia Payne

An intimate, affecting account of life during wartime, told through the lives that have been shattered.

Even as scores of Americans rally to the Ukrainian cause and adopt Volodymyr Zelensky as a hero, the lives of Ukrainians remain opaque and mostly anonymous. In By the Second Spring, the historian Danielle Leavitt goes beyond familiar portraits of wartime heroism and victimhood to reveal the human experience of the conflict. An American who grew up in Ukraine, Leavitt draws on her deep familiarity with the country and a unique trove of online diaries to track a diverse group of Ukrainians through the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Among others, we meet Vitaly, whose plans to open a coffee bar in a Kyiv suburb come to naught when the Russian army marches through his town and his apartment building is split in two by a rocket; Anna, who drops out of the police academy and begins a tumultuous relationship with a soldier she meets online; and Polina, a fashion-industry insider who returns home from Los Angeles with her American husband to organize relief. To illuminate the complex resurgence of Ukraine’s national spirit, Leavitt also tells the story of Volodymyr Shovkoshitniy—a nuclear engineer at Chernobyl who went on to lead a daring campaign in the late 1980s to return the bodies of three Ukrainian writers who’d died in a Soviet gulag. Writing with closeness and compassion, Leavitt has given us an interior history of Europe’s largest land war in seventy-five years.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2025 Danielle Leavitt (P)2025 Macmillan Audio

The reminder of what is really happening right now people in Ukraine and how they’re living through ongoing profound stress.

Loved everything. Everyone should read this book. Danielle does an incredible job helping one realize the realities of a modern war.

Beautiful, gripping, honest storytelling

Well researched, well written, compassionate, eye-opening read. I’m so grateful for this book to give me a window into the lives of ordinary people in war-torn Ukraine. The war is such a tragedy, and this book is a wonderful and much-needed witness of the Ukrainian people

Absolutely beautiful

This book is stunningly written. Each story is gripping and emotional. The historical and political context is artfully woven throughout the book. This book is easily five stars.

Poignant Story Telling

The author did an excellent job in helping me understand the inner lives of those experiencing the war in Ukraine. I felt like I got to know them. She did not shy away from the ambiguous nature of life, but rather embraced it, going deep into the societal bedrock that makes Ukraine, while at the same time weaving a spell binding overarching theme of humanity and its inner strength. The writing style itself was excellent. And the audio performance equally well done.

beautifully encapsulates the lives of Ukranians in a modern war

The author did a fabulous job intertwining historical and social background with diverse characters who each experience the war in a different way. I was moved by the characters stories and how an unnecessary war impacts and drives the daily lives of a whole country.

A compelling look into the lives affected by the war in Ukraine

I really loved this book. My favorite nonfiction books are often from the WWII era that really dive in and follow individuals and how the war and events surrounding the war affected them. This book does an excellent job at doing this for an ongoing war.
I thought the author did an excellent job weaving the relevant history and background into the stories of these individuals to give us, the readers, context that helps us understand what’s really happening. It was a compelling view of the hardships, hope, and everyday lives that are affected by this unnecessary war.
I strongly recommend it.
I did find the narrator a little robotic at times, but I did appreciate that she speaks the language and was able to pronounce words correctly that I wouldn’t have been able to as a reader.

They are just like us.

it was good to here of the lives and humanity of people just like us.