Packed with details of everyday life from giving birth in a Soviet hospital to living in a Moscow communal apartment. Forced to give up her American citizenship during Stalin's reign, Wettlin was coerced into becoming an informant for the KGB. She describes what Russia was like during and after World War II, her travels from the Baltic states to Siberia, Outer Mongolia, Leningrad, Uzbekistan and Georgia. Her mesmerizing book offers a background for understanding Soviet events that molded the Russian mind--from revolutionary enthusiasm to a complete repudiation of communism.

    Suddenly the boy who had stood in the shadows, dreaming of ruling the world, was a public figure, and his popularity soared. Russia and an infatuated West were determined to see the progressive leader of their dreams, even as he seized control of media, sent political rivals and critics into exile or to the grave, and smashed the country's fragile electoral system, concentrating power in the hands of his cronies.As a journalist living in Moscow, Masha Gessen experienced this history firsthand, and for The Man Without a Face she has drawn on information and sources no other writer has tapped. Her account of how a "faceless" man maneuvered his way into absolute-and absolutely corrupt-power has the makings of a classic of narrative nonfiction.

    It was built on the twentieth-century magic called 'the planned economy', which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950's, the magic seemed to be working.Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan, and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, it give the tyranny its happy ending. It's history, it's fiction. It's a comedy of ideas, and a novel about the cost of ideas.By award-winning (and famously unpredictable) author of The Child That Books Built and Backroom Boys, Red Plenty is as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant - and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.

    It was the first war to be fought with modern weapons.The Japanese had fought the Chinese at sea in 1894 and had gained a foothold in Manchuria by taking control of Port Authur. In 1895, however, Japan was forced to abandon its claims by the Russian fleet's presence in the Straits of Tsushima. Tsar Nicholas had obtained a window to the East for his empire and Japan had been humiliated. Tensions between the two countries would rise inexorably over the next decade.Around the world, no one doubted that little Japan would be no match for the mighty armies of Tsar Nicholas II. Yet Russia was in an advanced state of decay, the government corrupt and its troops inept and demoralized. Japan, meanwhile, was emerging from centuries of feudal isolation and becoming an industrial power, led by zealous nationalist warlords keen to lead the Orient to victory over the oppressive West. From the opening surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Authur in 1904, the Japanese out-fought and out-thought the Russians.This is a definitive account of one of the pivotal conflicts of the twentieth century whose impact was felt around the world.

    Narrated by the mother of Russia's last tsar, this novel brings to life the courageous story of Maria Feodorovna, one of Imperial Russia's most compelling women, who witnessed the splendor and tragic downfall of the Romanovs as she fought to save her dynasty in its final years.

    As if rising from an uneasy grave, Palchinsky's ghost leads us through the miasma of Soviet technology and industry, pointing out the mistakes he condemned in his time, the corruption and collapse he predicted, the ultimate price paid for silencing those who were not afraid to speak out. The story of this visionary engineer's life and work, as Loren Graham relates it, is also the story of the Soviet Union's industrial promise and failure.We meet Palchinsky in pre-Revolutionary Russia, immersed in protests against the miserable lot of laborers in the tsarist state, protests destined to echo ironically during the Soviet worker's paradise. Exiled from the country, pardoned and welcomed back at the outbreak of World War I, the engineer joined the ranks of the Revolutionary government, only to find it no more open to criticism than the previous regime. His turbulent career offers us a window on debates over industrialization. Graham highlights the harsh irrationalities built into the Soviet system--the world's most inefficient steel mill in Magnitogorsk, the gigantic and ill-conceived hydroelectric plant on the Dnieper River, the infamously cruel and mislocated construction of the White Sea Canal. Time and again, we see the effects of policies that ignore not only the workers' and consumers' needs but also sound management and engineering precepts. And we see Palchinsky's criticism and advice, persistently given, consistently ignored, continue to haunt the Soviet Union right up to its dissolution in 1991.The story of a man whose gifts and character set him in the path of history, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer is also a cautionary tale about the fate of an engineering that disregards social and human issues.

    April 12, 1961. A top secret rocket site in the USSR. A young Russian sits inside a tiny capsule on top of the Soviet Union’s most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile—originally designed to carry a nuclear warhead—and blasts into the skies. His name is Yuri Gagarin. And he is about to make history. Travelling at almost 18,000 miles per hour—ten times faster than a rifle bullet—Gagarin circles the globe in just 106 minutes. From his windows he sees the earth as nobody has before, crossing a sunset and a sunrise, crossing oceans and continents, witnessing its beauty and its fragility. While his launch begins in total secrecy, within hours of his landing he has become a world celebrity – the first human to leave the planet. Beyond tells the thrilling story behind that epic flight on its 60th anniversary. It happened at the height of the Cold War as the US and USSR confronted each other across an Iron Curtain. Both superpowers took enormous risks to get a man into space first, the Americans in the full glare of the media, the Soviets under deep cover. Both trained their teams of astronauts to the edges of the endurable. In the end the race between them would come down to the wire.Drawing on extensive original research and the vivid testimony of eyewitnesses, many of whom have never spoken before, Stephen Walker unpacks secrets that were hidden for decades and takes the reader into the drama of one of humanity’s greatest adventures – to the scientists, engineers and political leaders on both sides, and above all to the American astronauts and their Soviet rivals battling for supremacy in the heavens.

    He writes about history the way Doris Kearns Goodwin's smart-ass, reprobate kid brother might. I, for one, prefer it."--Gene Weingarten, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and Washington Post columnist Scandal! Intrigue! Cossacks! Here the world's most engaging royal historian chronicles the world's most fascinating imperial dynasty: the Romanovs, whose three-hundred-year reign was remarkable for its shocking violence, spectacular excess, and unimaginable venality. In this incredibly entertaining history, Michael Farquhar collects the best, most captivating true tales of Romanov iniquity. We meet Catherine the Great, with her endless parade of virile young lovers (none of them of the equine variety); her unhinged son, Paul I, who ordered the bones of one of his mother's paramours dug out of its grave and tossed into a gorge; and Grigori Rasputin, the "Mad Monk," whose mesmeric domination of the last of the Romanov tsars helped lead to the monarchy's undoing. From Peter the Great's penchant for personally beheading his recalcitrant subjects (he kept the severed head of one of his mistresses pickled in alcohol) to Nicholas and Alexandra's brutal demise at the hands of the Bolsheviks, Secret Lives of the Tsars captures all the splendor and infamy that was Imperial Russia.Praise for Secret Lives of the Tsars "An accessible, exciting narrative . . . Highly recommended for generalists interested in Russian history and those who enjoy the seamier side of past lives."--Library Journal (starred review)"An excellent condensed version of Russian history . . . a fine tale of history and scandal . . . sure to please general readers and monarchy buffs alike."--Publishers Weekly "Tales from the nasty lives of global royalty . . . an easy-reading, lightweight history lesson."--Kirkus Reviews"Readers of this book may get a sense of why Russians are so tolerant of tyrants like Stalin and Putin. Given their history, it probably seems normal."--The Washington Post

    The brutal murder of the Russian Imperial family on the night of July sixteenth to seventeenth, 1918 has long been a defining moment in world history. The Last Days of the Romanovs reveals in exceptional detail how the conspiracy to kill them unfolded. In the vivid style of a TV documentary, Helen Rappaport reveals both the atmosphere inside the family's claustrophobic prison and the political maneuverings of those who wished to save--or destroy--them. With the watching world and European monarchies proving incapable of saving the Romanovs, the narrative brings this tragic story to life in a compellingly new and dramatic way, culminating in a bloody night of horror in a cramped basement room.

    After his father was brutally murdered, Frederick left the South and worked as a waiter in Chicago and Brooklyn. Seeking greater freedom, he traveled to London, then crisscrossed Europe, andin a highly unusual choice for a black American at the time went to Russia. Because he found no color line there, Frederick settled in Moscow, becoming a rich and famous owner of variety theaters and restaurants. When the Bolshevik Revolution ruined him, he barely escaped to Constantinople, where he made another fortune by opening celebrated nightclubs as the "Sultan of Jazz." However, the long arm of American racism, the xenophobia of the new Turkish Republic, and Frederick s own extravagance landed him in debtor s prison. He died in Constantinople in 1928."

    Eighty-year-old Georgy Jachmenev is haunted by his past—a past of death, suffering, and scandal that will stay with him until the end of his days. Living in England with his beloved wife, Zoya, Georgy prepares to make one final journey back to the Russia he once knew and loved, the Russia that both destroyed and defined him. As Georgy remembers days gone by, we are transported to St. Petersburg, to the Winter Palace of the czar, in the early twentieth century—a time of change, threat, and bloody revolution. As Georgy overturns the most painful stone of all, we uncover the story of the house of special purpose.

    Each success noted had to be verified by a witness and signed by a superior officer.The journal of Sutkus is one of only a few such books to have survived the war. It records more than 200 kills, placing him as one of the wars most successful snipers. A large part of his journal is reproduced for the first time here.As a Hitler Youth member his skill as a marksman was quickly noted and, in July 1943, aged 19, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. A month later he was sent on a five month snipers course in Wilna, after which he was posted to the Eastern Front. He was so successful that his superiors sent him to crucial positions. Despite his age, he was regarded as one of Germanys best snipers and in November 1944 he was awarded the Scharfshtzenabzeichen 3 Stufe the highest award for a sniper.After being wounded in January 1945, Sutkus was given time to recuperate away from the Eastern Front. During this time he met a Red Cross nurse, to whom he gave all his journal.When the war finished, Sutkus was forced to join the Red Army. He deserted to join the Lithuanian resistance fighters. After being captured again he was tortured by the KGB and deported to Siberia to endure forced labor. It was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union that he was able return to Germany and find his journal, still in the hands of the same nurse.Introduction written by David L. Robbins.

    At the height of his fame, he was thought to be no less than a demonic figure, possessed of supernatural powers, a dissolute agent of the forces of evil with an iron-clad, perhaps sexual, hold on the throne of Imperial Russia. His disciples swooned in his presence; his enemies plotted his murder. Rasputin is the story of an illiterate Siberian peasant who penetrated the very highest circles of the Romanov dynasty, a srarets (holy man) whose pilgrimages and struggles of conscience warred with sexual rapacity and a predilection for drink, a monk whose fame as a faith healer and visionary was eclipsed by scandalous orgies and notorious palace intrigue until his very name became a synonym for vice and corruption. Here are the people in his life: his jealous (or admiring) fellow holy man, the political ministers who curried his favor, the female disciples who gave him sex to save their souls and the Tsarina Alexandra, who child he saved and whose heart eh never lost, even as scandal succeeded scandal. And here is the turbulent Imperial Russia of which he was so dramatic a part, an explosive mixture of religious fervor, political brutality, sexual promiscuity, and social decadence. From his humble beginnings to the bloody murder that marked his end, Rasputin was never less than a figure of controversy and mystery. Was he an ambitious fraud, a man divinely inspired, or a simple peasant thrust by circumstances into a position he never fully understood?

    Radiation: What could go wrong? In short, plenty. From Marie Curie carrying around a vial of radium salt because she liked the pretty blue glow to the large-scale disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima, dating back to the late nineteenth century, nuclear science has had a rich history of innovative exploration and discovery, coupled with mistakes, accidents, and downright disasters. In this lively book, long-time advocate of continued nuclear research and nuclear energy James Mahaffey looks at each incident in turn and analyzes what happened and why, often discovering where scientists went wrong when analyzing past meltdowns. Every incident, while taking its toll, has led to new understanding of the mighty atom—and the fascinating frontier of science that still holds both incredible risk and great promise.

    Her husband, however, possesses no such grace, and he rules Moscow as he does his wife, with a cold, hard fist.For Pavel and his bride, though, living in Sankt Peterburg means sharing a crowded cellar with other families, and being barely able to afford bread. Nevertheless, they are full of optimism, for their grandparents were serfs and this young couple is the first to leave the countryside to seek a better existence.However, after an explosive confrontation between peaceful demonstrators and tsarist soldiers, the lives of Ella and Pavel take two very different turns, but the fire of revolutionary Russia eventually links their fates forever.Robert Alexander once again masterfully combines the power of true history and riveting storytelling to bring this fascinating and legendary period to life.