The conventional story of the end of the cold war focuses on the geopolitical power struggle between the United States and the USSR: Ronald Reagan waged an aggressive campaign against communism, outspent the USSR, and forced Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."In There Is No Freedom Without Bread!, a daring revisionist account of that seminal year, the Russian-born historian Constantine Pleshakov proposes a very different interpretation. The revolutions that took pla...

On June 22, 1941, radios all over the Soviet Union crackled with the announcement that the country had been attacked by Nazi Germany. But the voice on the airwaves was not the familiar one of Joseph Stalin; it was the voice of his deputy, Molotov. Paralyzed by Hitler's unexpected move, Stalin disappeared completely from public view for the crucial ten days of war on the Eastern Front. In this taut, hour-by-hour account, Constantine Pleshakov draws on a wealth of information from newly open...

How the West sleepwalked into another Cold WarA native of Yalta, Constantine Pleshakov is intimately familiar with Crimea's ethnic tensions and complex political history. Now, he offers a much-needed look at one of the most urgent flash points in current international relations: the first occupation and annexation of one European nation's territory by another since World War II.Pleshakov illustrates how the proxy war unfolding in Ukraine is a clash of incompatible world views...

On May 14-15, 1905, in the Tsushima Straits near Japan, an entire Russian fleet was annihilated, its ships sunk, scattered, or captured by the Japanese. In the deciding battle of the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese lost only three destroyers but the Russians lost twenty-two ships and thousands of sailors. It was the first modern naval battle, employing all the new technology of destruction. The old imperial navy was woefully unprepared. The defeat at Tsushima was the last and greatest of ...

On May 14-15, 1905, in the Tsushima Straits near Japan, an entire Russian fleet was annihilated, its ships sunk, scattered, or captured by the Japanese. In the deciding battle of the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese lost only three destroyers but the Russians lost twenty-two ships and thousands of sailors. It was the first modern naval battle, employing all the new technology of destruction. The old imperial navy was woefully unprepared. The defeat at Tsushima was the last and greatest of ...

A saga of love and lust, personal tensions and rivalries, antagonisms and hatreds, The Flight of the Romanovs describes the last century of the Russian imperial dynasty, the Romanovs, from the youth of the future tsar Alexander III in the 1860s until the death in 1960 of his daughter, Olga Alexandrovna, the last grand duchess. John Curtis Perry and Constantine V. Pleshakov use a wealth of previously untapped sources, including unpublished diaries of many of the principal characte...

An explosive chronicle of history's greatest sea battle, from the coauthor of Gibraltar: The Greatest Siege in British History.In the tradition of Antony Beevor's Stalingrad, Nelson's Trafalgar presents the definitive blow-by-blow account of the world's most famous naval battle, when the British Royal Navy, under Lord Horatio Nelson, dealt a decisive blow to the forces of Napoleon. The Battle of Trafalgar comes boldly to life in this defi...

A captivating exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted the most international power and influence: as a matchmaking grandmother.As her reign approached its sixth decade, Queen Victoria's grandchildren numbered over thirty, and to maintain and increase British royal power, she was determined to maneuver them into a series of dynastic marriages with the royal houses of Europe.Yet for all their apparent obedience, her grandchildren often had pla...

“Riveting . . . This thorough work is immensely detailed yet readable and continuously engaging.” —Publishers WeeklyAn immersive, gripping account of the rise and fall of Iran's glamorous Pahlavi dynasty, written with the cooperation of the late Shah's widow, Empress Farah, Iranian revolutionaries and US officials from the Carter administration.In this remarkably human portrait of one of the twentieth century's most complicated per...

In this “superb history” (The Wall Street Journal), award-winning author Candace Fleming tells the extraordinary true story of Russia’s last royal family—and transports readers back to a time when both a bloodline and an empire came tumbling down.“Has all the elements of a fictional thriller . . . woven into a fascinating work of history.”— The Washington PostWINNER: Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young ...

A spirited, poignant history of the seven daughters of the great Empress Maria Theresia—among them, Queen Marie Antoinette of France—tracing their lives as they balanced dynastic duty with personal ambition in a time of revolutionary cataclysm“Others make war; you, happy Austria, marry.”For three centuries, the astute positioning of their many princesses and princes had kept the Habsburgs at the peak of European power. By 1764, after a generation of costly ...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAAH STONE BOOK AWARDA new history of US education through the nineteenth century that rigorously accounts for Black, Native, and white experiences; a story that exposes the idea of American education as “the great equalizer” to not only be a lie, but also a myth that reproduces past harms.Education is the epicenter of every community in the United States. Indeed, few institutions are as pivotal in shaping our lives and ...