Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees are co-authors of two books, The Tsarina's Lost Treasure: Catherine the Great, a Golden Age Masterpiece, and a Legendary Shipwreck, published in 2020 and The Last Stand of the Raven Clan: A Story of Imperial Ambition, Native Resistance, and How the Tlingit-Russian War Shaped a Continent, which was just published a few months ago and is the subject of today’s interview. Gerald Easter is a political science professor at Boston College, focusing on Russia and Eastern Europe. Reconstructing the State, published in 2000, examines the personal networks and informal sources of power than contributed to the expansion of the Soviet control over its multi-ethnic satellite states, as well as to the empire’s later disintegration. His award-winning book, Capital Coercion, and Post-Communist States, published in 2012, explores the disparate outcomes, democratic vs. authoritarian, of post-Soviet satellite states. Mara Vorhees is a travel writer and photographer who has contributed to over forty guidebooks published by Lonely Planet, about such diverse destinations as New England, Central America, and Russia. She also the creator and writer of the blog, Have Twins, Will Travel: Adventures & Misadventures in Family Travel.

Recorded 2/4/25.