Joseph Kanon “The Good German”
An American journalist returns to post-war Berlin to find the married woman he had an affair with, but he’s thrown into a maelstrom of crime, treason, and attempts to hire the brighest German minds for either side in the impending cold war. Lawless 1945 Berlin is a great backdrop for a novel that highlights that “morally good or justified” can be very malleable. The book is a bit on the long side.
Verdict: intesting read
Nick LLoyd “The Eastern Front: A History of the First World War”
My perception of World War I has been shaped by books and imagery of the Western front. This book recounts the history of the Eastern Front which is so often overlooked, yet resulted in the collapse of an empire that lasted more than 7 centuries, four new nation states, the Soviet revolution, and the very uneven peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk that couldn’t save Germany’s war efforts. Excellent book to understand the trajectory of the war andd its long-lasting repercussions.
Verdict: must read
Ika Johannesson, Jon Jefferson Klingberg “Blood, Fire, Death: The Swedish Metal Story”
Swedish metal rules supreme anyway - and the authors cover a couple of metal genres and bands in an entertaining manner, i. e. Entombed, Dissection, or Mayhem by way of their Swedish singer. Must read if you’re into metal.
Verdict: must read
Aka Morchiladze “Journey to Karabakh”
A roadtrip in the tumultuous post-Soviet Caucasus, two Georgian guys wantplan to score drugs in Azerbaijan, but end up in Karabach’s war: a compelling and fascinating read.
Verdict: must read
Joseph Kanon “Leaving Berlin”
Airlift Berlin, leftist artists who have gone sceptical of communism, double agents, and military are the backdrop for this solid spy novel. The plot is a bit confusing, but there’s more than enough atmosphere of betrayal and Berlin noir.
Verdict: interesting read
Ken Follett “The Man from St. Petersburg”
Another attic find: Upstairs Russian teenage girl falls madly in love with a Downstairs peasant anarchist boy, conceives a child, and is forced into exile a and a shotgun wedding with an English aristocrat. They meet 18 years later - in 1914 - when he tries to assassinate a Russian diplomat to torpedo British-Russian negotiations. Good plot, we also meet Churchill and Pankhurst, but at times too fluffy and wordy.
Verdict: interesting read
John le Carré “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”
I found this in my parents’ bookshelf, it was released in 1974 and still is a good read - 50 years later! Le Carré’s spymaster Smiley has to uncover a mole in the top echelon of the British secret service, the twists and turns show that the world of secret services was a world of betrayal.
Verdict: interesting read
Karin Smirnoff “The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons”
Another instalment in the late Stieg Larsson’s series about Lisbeth Salander, an enigmatic Swedish woman which I would losely describe as a grown-up goth version of Pippi Longstocking who has turned all grumpy and is surrounded by social justice warriors who fight for the right cause and solve a crime while doing so. This time they are fighting environmental destruction and domestic violence. The story is meandering and full of clearly delineated good and bad guys with hard-to-believe traits. It’s still a page turner if you liked any other book of the series.
Verdict: may read
Paul Preston “A People Betrayed: A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain 1874-2018”
A general history book of Spain by Britain’s foremost Spain historian that starts around the time the country loses its last colonies. The book comprises 750 pages in 18 chapters, each chapter focuses on an era of Spanish politics, a lot of which have been dominated by the three scourges mentioned in the title. Not an easy, but still a very gripping read, highly recommended if you are into Spanish history.
Verdict: must read
Michael Reid “Spain: The Trials and Triumphs of a Modern European Country”
Hands down the best book on contemporary Spain, its society and politics.
Verdict: must read
Antony Beevor “The Spanish Civil War”
There are many books on the Spanish Civil War, only a tiny amount is impartial though. Beevor recounts the trajectory of the war neutrally, explains the lead-up to the war, tactics and politics of the different phases of the war, and its aftermath. A timeless classic.
Verdict: must read
Patricia Highsmith “Strangers on a Train”
A thriller from 1950 that hasn’t lost punch: two young men meet on a train and discuss the perfect murder and the ensuing avalanche slowly takes off…
Verdict: must read
Michael Palin “North Korea Journal”
This is the companion book to Palin’s travel documentary from 2018: the book is short, every day is given its own chapter of a few pages each. Despite this and the obvious difficulties to travel to and in North Korea, Palin manages to convey a lot of empathy towards his “travel guides” and the country.
Verdict: interesting read
Ken Follett “Eye of the needle”
I recently found this book in an old crate: it’s a spy/crime novel set before D-Day and a Germany uberspy threatens to inform the German secret service that the First United States Army Group is merely a sham. He needs to leave Great Britain in the north-east with a submarine, kills a lot of people, and ultimately fails. Full of suspense and interesting characters.
Verdict: interesting read
Daniel Knowles “Carmageddon - How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It”
I share the author’s opinion on cars and I thoroughly enjoyed the 200-page anti-car sermon. Knowles correctly points that apart from combustion engines cooking the planet, cars waste space, accidents impair or kill people and they cause noise. Walking and cycling are healthy and shorter commutes gift you more time every day. Yet, I think he vastly underestimates how many people really want to live the suburban lifestyle, my impression - unlike the author’s - is that the “lust for cars” is only getting bigger.
Verdict: must read
Katja Hoyer “Beyond the Wall”
Hoyer is an East-German historian who has been living in the UK for a couple of years and wrote this book about her native country geared towards the English-speaking world - where it received more positive reviews than in Germany. The author interweaves anecdotes and historical events and makes the world’s grayest country look a bit more colourful - nothing beats the drab Mutti Merkel’s craving for blue jeans - and achieves one of her stated goals (“a place far more dynamic than the Cold War caricature often painted in the West”). I don’t buy into the tacit suggestion that East German culture has been actively ignored - e. g. have a look at “their TV station” which is uninteresting to anyone not East German - but this book may be pave the way to more books on the GDR that is neither dismissive nor overly nostalgic.
Verdict: must read
Fabrizio Fenghi “It Will Be Fun and Terrifying”
The book is subtitled “Nationalism and Protest in Post-Soviet Russia” and its two main protagonists are Eduard Limonov and Aleksandr Dugin, two of the co-founders of the National Bolshevik Party. Fenghi shows how these two fringe people managed to blend socialism and fascism into their own ideology, achieve considerable success in the post-Soviet political space and then how Dugin managed to move into the Russian political mainstream with the Eurasia Movement and supposedly wield a lot of influence over Putin. This is an intellectual book and not easy to read, it is essential to understand this fascinating and unreal topic.
Verdict: must read
Serhii Plokhy “The Russo-Ukrainian War”
This book was released in May 2023 with the war raging at full scale. It consists of two parts: the lead-up the war which is very well-explained, the invasion of the [Little green men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men_(Russo-Ukrainian_War) which has been widely ignored in the West. Plokhy also explains how fundamental the Ukrainian SSR was in the Soviet Union and the role of 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum in its break-up. The second part is about the actual war itself and it feels a bit cobbled together, not surprising because we don’t really know yet how things will end. I’m sure there will a compelling second edition, hopefully soon.
Verdict: must read
Juliane Fürst “Flowers through concrete”
The author is a historian and recounts the history of Soviet hippies with tangible empathy. She dug through personal and official archives - the Russian official ones are not accessible for obvious reasons - for more than a decade and almost brings to life her subjects and the Soviet society and its morale as a backdrop. Subculture research in the Soviet Union - except for some tidbits of punk - is almost inaccessible for me because I don’t speak any Russian, but the book seems very well-researched and the writing good which papers over the editing which feels a bit sloppy: an academic book which you must read if you are interested in subculture or Soviet history.
Verdict: must read
Serhii Plokhy “The Last Empire”
Plokhy recounts the last months of the Soviet Union starting with the August coup via the dissolution on the 8th December 1991, when the leaders of the Slavic republics decided to leave the union, to the 25th of December 1991 when Gorbachev resigned with a a televised speech. The author sheds light on the struggle between Gorbachev and Yeltsin and then-regional leaders like Leonid Kravchuk or Nursultan Nazarbayev, how the USA led president George Bush tried to stay on top of things, and how the world’s then largest empire would disappear more or less peacefully. This book also helps to understand the ethnic conflicts and wars that have flared up since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Verdict: must read
Doug Johnstone “Black hearts”
I read most of Johnstone’s books and the Skelf family series are unfortunately not among my favorites: The Skelfs are a family of grandmother, mother, and daughter who run a funeral business and moonlight as sleuths. This crime novel has too many plots and characters to keep track of - so despite Johnstone’s excellent writing it was a bit of a dull read.
Verdict: may read
Arthur Chichester “The burning edge - Travels through an irradiated Belarus”
Arthur Chichester - his more famous name is Bald and Bankrupt - visited Belarus, especially the nowadays deserted area that was heavily irradiated after the Chernobyl disaster. The book is very much like Bald’s videos: he knows Russian and he adds some background information about the country. I guess he would word his assessment of “Batska” a bit differently today. If you enjoy Bald and have two spare hours - read this book!
Verdict: interesting read
Adam Hochschild “American Midnight”
A left-wing historian writes about the First Red Scare and covers the years from 1917 to 1921. The author shows how enthusiasm for war and nationalism led to a wide-spread fear of left-wing movements and at the end he also draws some parallels to the Trump presidency. It’s not a dry history book rattling down the facts, it rather tries to recount the fates of “normal people”. Personally I know too little about that period in the USA, so I would have done better with an introduction.
Verdict: interesting read
Jarvis Cocker “Good Pop, Bad Pop”
Jarvis Cocker cleans up his attic and needs to decide whether to keep or bin things he hasn’t seen in years. Things turn into memories of adolescence, setting up a pop band, school, moving out and a lot more. Must read if you are even only remotely into Pulp or britpop.
Verdict: must read
Ira levin “The Boys from Brazil”
Josef Mengele tries to take over the world in 70ies, but Yakov Liebermann (very reminiscent) of Simon Wiesenthal prevents that. The book is off to a thrilling start, but fizzles out towards the end, especially because it is somewhat amusing to see how they imagined the future would be. I found this book in my parents’ attic and I bet it must have been an exciting read back then. The plot is great and it’s still a quick read…
Verdict: interesting read
Chris Miller “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology”
The history of the semiconductor industry in one book, readable and understandable, yet not too superficial. It points out how chip technology was essential in winning the cold war and retain American/Western supremacy. It also explains how complex chip production is, what Moore’s law’s exponential growth means in real life, and the many choke points that exist. It provides for a solid understanding of what US industrial policy has looked liked since Trump and what it quite likely will look like in the years to come.
Verdict: must read
Ada Ferrer “Cuba: An American History”
The author itself says it: a book on the history of Cuba from a Howard Zinn perspective. The author, a professor of history, was born in Cuba, emigrated to the USA as a toddler, and returned to Cuba many times. She recounts Cuban history from a people’s perspective and intertwines it in a revealing manner with US-American history, she also treads a fine line between Cuban, American, Cuban-American and (US) Democratic perspective and manages to be sensible there. A thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening read.
Verdict: must read
M. Mitchell Waldrop “The Dream Machine”
A fantastic book on the history of computing intertwined with the biography of J. C. R. Licklider, one of its early visionaries who was seminal for how we interact with computers, software, networking, and thus today’s internet. This is quite a tome, but an excellent and compelling read.
Verdict: must read
Serhii Plokhy “The Man with the Poison Gun: A Cold War Spy Story”
Plokhy, a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard university, chronicles the life of Bogdan Stashinsky, a Soviet spy of Ukrainian descent. In the 51950s0ies he killed two leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, one of which was Stepan Bandera, with an umbrella that was squirting cyanide. He later married an East-German woman who convinced him to defect to West-Berlin, on the night before the Wall was built, was put to trial and sentenced to jail in West-Germany. He disappears after having been released from prison. Plokhy’s writing is captivating, the story itself is so good it makes a James Bond movie look mundane.
Verdict: must read
Victoria Smolkin “A Sacred Space is never empty”
One of the Soviet Union’s goals on the path to reach communism was to do away with religion through the scientific foundations of their new belief. This book chronicles the different approaches that were taken over the roughly 70 years of Soviet rule: suppression by militant atheists, tacit acceptance, collaboration against an external enemy to ersatz rites. 1000 years of the Christianization of Kievan Rusʹ Gorbachev officially met the then head of the Orthodox church, much to almost everyone’s surprise. An excellent read and I would much appreciate a follow-up on the Yeltsin and Putin years.
Verdict: must read
Tim Marshall “The Power of Geography”
9 countries and how their history was shaped by their geography, entertaining reads of half an hour each. The book ends with how the upcoming space race may end up and how geography may shape that. Read it soon (till June 2023), this book won’t age well.
Verdict: worth a read
Zakhar Prilepin “Sankya”
Sasha is a young member of the “SS Party”, cheeky acronym for Sojus Sosidajuschtschich, who fight against Westernization, globalization, and the powers that be. The author romps through various graphical acts of violence in Moscow, Riga and Sasha’s native Nizhni Novgorod. Their economic ideas are left-leaning, their social ideas right-leaning, e. g. Women play second fiddle both in the party and in Sasha’s life. Sounds familiar? Everything seems to be modeled after the National Bolshevik Party and it turns out that the author was a long-time of said party, so the novel might be quite autobiographic, although all involved parties deny that. Today’s Prilepin thinks that Putin is a wuss.
The book was published in 2006 and translated to German in 2012 and to English in 2014. Its German publisher is left-leaning and intellectual and it received raving reviews back then, which is next-to impossible to understand with today’s moral compass.
Verdict: skip