Russia

Wise and comprehensive

"Quick and easy to read...very valuable"

"It is an engaging guide...and written with the same flair as his previous bestseller, *Afghantsi*."

"An academic and easily readable journey through the past thousand years of Russian history... To understand this tormented nation, there is no better way to read this illuminating portrait."

With its attack on Ukraine, Russia's future looks almost as uncertain as its past. The world's largest country—with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons—has been known for the past thousand years as Rus, Muscovy, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union. Thirty years ago, the Russian Federation was reshaped. Russia is no mystery, but its past is violent and tragic, sometimes glorious, and certainly complicated. Like all of us, Russians are constantly rewriting their history. They, too, ignore incidents of national shame in favor of patriotic narratives, sometimes rooted more in myth than reality. Expert and former ambassador Roderick Braithwaite parses fact from fiction to discover the roots of the Russian story, now more relevant to the rest of the world than ever.