Steven Pifer
“The Eagle and the Trident: U.S.–Ukraine Relations in Turbulent Times”
Steven Pifer spent over a decade working on U.S.-Ukraine relations with the Department of State. He also served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000.
“The Eagle and the Trident” provides a comprehensive account of the development of U.S. diplomatic relations with an independent Ukraine, covering the years 1992 through 2004 following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Pifer reflects on what worked and what did not work in the various U.S. approaches towards Ukraine. He also offers practical recommendations for current U.S. policies in the context of ongoing uncertainty about the political stability of Ukraine and Russia’s long-term intentions toward its smaller but important neighbor.
Buy on Amazon: $25 hardcover, $16 Kindle edition.
Taras Kuzio
“Putin’s War Against Ukraine: Revolution, Nationalism, and Crime”
Taras Kuzio is a Ukrainian-British academic based in Toronto.
“Putin’s War Against Ukraine” focuses on national identity as the root of the crisis through Russia’s long-term refusal to view Ukrainians as a separate people and unwillingness to recognize the sovereignty and borders of independent Ukraine.
Kuzio attempts to debunk myths surrounding Russia’s military occupation of eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea.
Buy on Amazon: $19 hardcover, $6 Kindle edition.
Anne Applebaum
“Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine”
Anne Applebaum is an American journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who extensively writes about communism.
In “Red Famine” she studies the 1929 Joseph Stalin’s policy on agricultural collectivization which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history with at least five million people dying between 1931 and 1933.
Applebaum argues that more than three million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy, but because the state deliberately set out to kill them. She sheds the light on Holodomor — a famine, artifically created on Stalin’s orders, in order to destroy the Ukrainian independence movement.
Buy on Amazon: $23 hardcover, $22 Kindle edition.
Arkady Ostrovsky
“The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News”
Arkady Ostrovsky is the Russia and Eastern Europe editor for The Economist.
A winner of the Orwell Prize, The Invention of Russia explains the phenomenon of Vladimir Putin — his rise and astonishing longevity, his use of hybrid warfare and military interventions.
In the preface, Ostrovsky explores how Putin influenced the 2016 U.S. presidential elections and considers how Putin’s methods — weaponizing the media and serving up fake news — came to enter American politics.
Buy on Amazon: $16 hardcover, $12 paperback, $12 Kindle edition.
Svetlana Alexievich
“Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future”
Svetlana Alexievich is a Belarusian writer, the winner of 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature.
A new translation of “Chernobyl Prayer” — it was first published in English in 2016 — is based on the extended and updated story of 1986 explosion of reactor No. 4 at Chornobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine.
While officials tried to cover up the accident, Alexievich spent years collecting testimonies from survivors — liquidators, residents, firefighters, resettlers, widows, orphans — and crafting them into monologues of human tragedy.
Another book by Alexievich, “The Unwomanly Face of War,” was translated into English and published in 2017. It is the classic oral history of Soviet women’s experiences in the Second World War.
Buy on Amazon: $43 paperback, $14 Kindle edition.
Yevhen Nikiforov
“Decommunized: Ukrainian Soviet Mosaics”
Yevhen Nikiforov is a Ukrainian photographer.
The book presents the first comprehensive study of Soviet monumental mosaics, outstanding artifacts of the cultural heritage of the era. Nikiforov spent three years traveling around Ukraine (including the presently occupied Crimea and war-torn Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts) in search of the most interesting art pieces from the 1950s to 1980s within the context of Soviet Modernism.
The book includes around 200 unique photographs of monumental panels: officially sanctioned gigantic images of workers, farmers, astronauts, and athletes of colored smalto or ceramics illustrate Soviet life as it was meant to be represented by state propaganda.
Buy on www.osnovypublishing.com for Hr 1,200.
