Europe Communism

"Drakulić’s composite portrait provides a clear-eyed look at European values, and what they really amount to." —The New Yorker An evocative and timely collection of essays that paints a portrait of Eastern Europe thirty years after the end of communism. An immigrant with a parrot in...

From an award-winning scholar, this definitive history reveals the tensions and transformations of the Russian Revolution. “McMeekin writes muscular history. His Russian Revolution grips the reader.” —Niall Ferguson In The Russian Revolution, acclaimed historian Sean McMeekin traces the...

A prize-winning historian’s major new history of the Second World War, arguing that Stalin’s USSR was the war’s driving force. “A provocative revisionist take on the Second World War … McMeekin is a formidable researcher.” —Financial Times We remember World War II as a struggle...

In The Red Flag, Oxford professor David Priestland tells the epic story of a movement that has taken root in dozens of countries across 200 years, from its birth after the French Revolution to its ideological maturity in 19th-century Germany to its rise to dominance (and subsequent fall) in the 20th century.

“Imagine Call Me By Your Name set in Communist Poland and you'll get a sense of Jedrowski's moving debut about a consuming love affair amidst a country being torn apart.” — O Magazine, LGBTQ Books That’ll Change the Literary Landscape in 2020 “Captivating both for its shimmering...

“BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE 20TH CENTURY.” —Time Volume 3 of the Nobel Prize winner’s towering masterpiece: Solzhenitsyn's moving account of resistance within the Soviet labor camps and his own release after eight years. Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum. “The greatest and...

WINNER OF THE 2026 PULITZER PRIZE FOR OPINION WRITING WINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia...

From an award-winning historian and Chernobyl survivor, a visceral account of the worst nuclear accident in history. "Vividly empathetic." —Wall Street Journal On the morning of April 26, 1986, Europe witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl...

A renowned political scientist’s searing explanation for the rightward turn of global politics since the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ushered in an era of tremendous political optimism: communism was receding and democracy was on the march in Eastern Europe...

Brought to you by Penguin. A sweeping, original history of the Cold War, from an acclaimed historian of the USSR Why did the Cold War erupt so soon after the Second World War? How did it escalate so rapidly, spanning five continents over six decades? And what led to the spectacular collapse of...

The first comprehensive history of the failed Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War, a decisive turning point in the relationship between Russia and the West Overlapping with and overshadowed by the First World War, the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War was one of the most...

She survived the war. She won back her independence from a brutal husband. But her daughter remains trapped behind an impenetrable Soviet border. Hungary, 1946. Anna Onisko has finally opened a modest fashion salon, fulfilling a lifelong dream. But more than a business, the shop is her last hope to fund the legal battles required to reunite with her daughter. Just as Anna’s new life begins to take shape, communist rule tightens under the shadow of the Soviet army. Her plans are violently crushed, throwing her into an overwhelming tide of restrictions and family betrayal. Refusing to bow ...

In this disturbing exposé, journalist Paul L. Williams describes a secret alliance forged at the close of World War II by the CIA, the Sicilian and US mafias, and the Vatican to thwart the possibility of a Communist invasion of Europe. Williams presents evidence suggesting the existence, in many European countries, of "stay-behind" units consisting of 5,000 to 15,000 military operatives.

The Bridge at Andau is James A. Michener at his most gripping. His classic nonfiction account of a doomed uprising is as searing and unforgettable as any of his bestselling novels. For five brief, glorious days in the autumn of 1956, the Hungarian revolution gave its people a glimpse at a...

A “brilliant,” “engaging,” and “valuable,” (Financial Times) exploration of why capitalism hurts women and how socialism, when done right, can bring economic independence, better labor conditions and, yes, even better sex. In Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, acclaimed...

The author of Free returns with an extraordinary inquiry into historical injustice, dignity, truth, and imagination. When Lea Ypi discovers a photo of her grandmother, Leman, honeymooning in the Alps in 1941 posted by a stranger on social media, she is faced with unsettling questions. Growing up...

The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939: An Introductory History for Students and General Readers Think World War II began in 1939? Think again. Between 1936 and 1939, Spain was torn apart by a brutal civil war that reshaped the country and became a deadly dress rehearsal for the global conflict that followed. Tens of thousands were killed in large-scale battles, aerial bombardments, and waves of repression. Political extremism surged, communities fractured, and violence reached into almost every corner of Spanish society. Yet this was far more than a Spanish conflict. The Spanish Civil War ...

Bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands narrates the fierce debate over America's role in the world in the runup to World War II through its two most important figures: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who advocated intervention, and his isolationist nemesis, aviator and...

From the author of The Habsburgs and The Middle Kingdoms, a lively, 1,500-year history of the shifting borders, imperial conflicts, and cultural fusions on Europe’s eastern edge. In Eastern Europe, historian Martyn Rady traces the long history of Europe’s eastern borderlands, showing how...

The European Union, NATO, the euro, and central and eastern Europe after the fall of communism.