Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Republics
As the title suggests, Asmus sees enormous stakes in the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war. Whether they were as high as he thinks or for the reasons he ascribes can be disputed, but there is much merit in his argument.
Ruud builds what is essentially a combined political biography of Ford and study of Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union around Ford's reporting and personal notes, interviews with Ford after his retirement, and his wife's unpublished memoir.
Why do different countries make different choices when it comes to international economic institutions? Darden sees the post-Soviet states as an ideal test case, because they began with similar characteristics and histories but nonetheless chose differently.
This is fascinating history, but of what? Engerman's chronicle of Sovietology in the United States focuses on the ties between the government and the academy -- the tension, as he says, between serving "both Mars and Minerva."
Heimann offers a no-punches-pulled political history of Czechoslovakia's whole trajectory, from its concoction in 1918, through its interwar democratic years, to its partition and acceptance of fascism, its Nazi occupation, its turn to communism, and, ultimately, its partition once again.
Edited by Abbott Gleason
This anthology covers a lot of ground -- from traces of proto-Slavic civilization before recorded history to Vladimir Putin's recent innovations.
