"In London in 1907, a decade before the revolution, young Stalin has yet to achieve the power, nor acted on the ruthlessness, that will define his legacy. Instead Koba, as he is known, arrives in London for the 5th Congress of the Russian Communist Party where he--and many of his fellow Bolsheviks--are only allowed to remain as a nonvoting witness. But his inability to vote does not limit his ability to act, and Stalin quickly begins forging alliances...

Biography of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (December 18, 1878 - March 5, 1953), a revolutionary in the Russian Empire and political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953.

November 1943: World War II teetered in the balance. The Nazis controlled nearly all of the European continent. Japan dominated the Pacific. Allied successes at Sicily and Guadalcanal had gained modest ground but at an extraordinary cost. On the Eastern Front, the Soviets had already lost millions of lives. That same month in Tehran, with the fate of the world in question, the 'Big Three,' Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin,...

“One of the finest, most gripping surveys of the history of Russian science in the twentieth century.” —Douglas Smith, author of Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy
 
Stalin and the Scientists tells the story of the many gifted scientists who worked in Russia from the years leading up to the revolution through the death of the “Great Scientist” himself, Joseph...

"In June 1934, Stalin allegedly called Boris Pasternak and they spoke about the arrest of Osip Mandelstam. A telephone call from the dictator was not something necessarily relished, and in the complicated world of literary politics it would have provided opportunities for potential misunderstanding and profound trouble. But this was a call one could not ignore. Stalin wanted to know what Pasternak thought of the idea that Mandelstam had been arrested....

A masterful and definitive biography of one of the most misunderstood and controversial writers in Russian literature. Mikhail Sholokhov is arguably one of the most contentious recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature. As a young man, Sholokhov's epic novel, Quiet Don, became an unprecedented overnight success. Stalin's Scribe is the first biography of a man who was once one of the Soviet Union's most prominent political figures. Thanks to...

"Berlin, November 1937. In a secret meeting with his top advisors, Adolf Hitler proclaims the urgent necessity for a war of aggression in Europe. Some conservatives are unnerved by this grandiose plan, but they are soon silenced, setting in motion events that will lead to the most calamitous war in history. Benjamin Carter Hett, the author of The Death of Democracy, his acclaimed history of the fall of the Weimar Republic, takes us from Berlin to...