firerosearien's review against another edition
5.0
An important book that examines the intersection of two of the most notorious regimes in human history. The prose is easy to follow and filled with haunting vignettes, turning the faceless numbers into actual people.
davidlz1's review
5.0
This book really highlights the inadequate teachings of this period of time in American history classes of secondary education. There tends to be a focus on black and white constructs rather than the actual grayness which existed. This book truly enlightens its readers into the complexities which existed as well as the statistics of the horrors which took place at this point in our history.
The book itself is very well cited. The author certainly did his homework and created an excellent reference book on this period. I am inclined to purchase a copy for my personal library as it a very well constructed piece of work. Clearly he spent a lot of time and energy researching and compiling information to get it right for the readers.
Truly the details are amazing and horrific at the same time. Certainly a subject which should never be forgotten.
The book itself is very well cited. The author certainly did his homework and created an excellent reference book on this period. I am inclined to purchase a copy for my personal library as it a very well constructed piece of work. Clearly he spent a lot of time and energy researching and compiling information to get it right for the readers.
Truly the details are amazing and horrific at the same time. Certainly a subject which should never be forgotten.
veryperi22's review
4.0
At some point. The lists and numbers felt a bit like listening to the town crier. Or an auction.
Incredibly important, horrifying, and yet almost frightfully boring by the expectation of more and more death.
The sheer size of the numbers are very hard to grasp, making it into a statistic.
Incredibly important, horrifying, and yet almost frightfully boring by the expectation of more and more death.
The sheer size of the numbers are very hard to grasp, making it into a statistic.
bookly_reads's review
5.0
“Violence is not confidence, and terror is not mastery.”
"Without a history built and defended upon an entirely different foundation, we will find that Hitler and Stalin continue to define their own works for us."
“When meaning is drawn from killing, the risk is that more killing would bring more meaning.”
“No major war or act of mass killing in the twentieth century began without the aggressors or perpetrators first claiming innocence and victimhood.”
“The Nazi and Soviet regimes turned people into numbers, some of which we can only estimate, some of which we can reconstruct with fair precision. It is for us as scholars to seek those numbers and to put them into perspective. It is for us as humanists to turn the numbers back into people. If we cannot do that, then Hitler and Stalin have shaped not only our world, but our humanity.”
Also want to remember that what I thought was a 21st century American liberal paradigm is actually an antisemitic framing that came from Stalin in the early 1950s: That Israel is like Nazi Germany, and Jews now like Nazis. Congrats to all the folks who keep the antisemitic Stalinist propaganda going strong. Stalin's ghost smiles on.
"Without a history built and defended upon an entirely different foundation, we will find that Hitler and Stalin continue to define their own works for us."
“When meaning is drawn from killing, the risk is that more killing would bring more meaning.”
“No major war or act of mass killing in the twentieth century began without the aggressors or perpetrators first claiming innocence and victimhood.”
“The Nazi and Soviet regimes turned people into numbers, some of which we can only estimate, some of which we can reconstruct with fair precision. It is for us as scholars to seek those numbers and to put them into perspective. It is for us as humanists to turn the numbers back into people. If we cannot do that, then Hitler and Stalin have shaped not only our world, but our humanity.”
Also want to remember that what I thought was a 21st century American liberal paradigm is actually an antisemitic framing that came from Stalin in the early 1950s: That Israel is like Nazi Germany, and Jews now like Nazis. Congrats to all the folks who keep the antisemitic Stalinist propaganda going strong. Stalin's ghost smiles on.
larry1138's review against another edition
5.0
The best way I can introduce this book might be through the concept of the horror of the mundane. Humans are not particularly good at processing large numbers. We understand the concept of one thousand, or a few thousand, or even tens of thousands, millions even. But we can't really "feel" millions of something. We can't even really feel a thousand. We are able to truly feel and connect with individual stories, which is why we take personal anecdotes of loss and pain very much to heart, but not reports of how many hundreds or thousands dead in a natural disaster to heart, for example.
This book throws a lot of large numbers at you. Five thousand, fourteen thousand, forty thousand, five million, sixteen million. After hearing all of these numbers you start to get almost bored of it. All these numbers are so much, and there's so many of them. It's all so mundane. But then the narrator of the audiobook started listing off the number of casualties during the Holomodor in Ukraine in 1933. And that was the point when I truly understood the concept of the horror of the mundane. It was when I thought to myself "Oh good, at least only two thousand five hundred people starved to death here, unlike the twelve thousand that starved in that other town." The casual nature of that statement stunned me a little. And that moment has perhaps given me a clearer view of how truly awful it must have been to have lived through the 1930s and World War II, or perhaps more accurately, died from it.
Timothy Snyder has written a book that is only enjoyable because it slaps you in the face with the cold, cruel reality of math, which then causes you see the history of Eastern Europe in a much clearer light. Ralph Cosham, the narrator, does a fantastic job at presenting the data in a very sober, sometimes necessarily somber voice.
I'm glad Snyder has covered the atrocities of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They are two of the most destructive nation states in history, furthering two of the most destructive ideologies in history, led by two of the worst madmen in history. Snyder's research unearths and explains the twisted logic of both in a way I've never truly experienced before, and I am thankful to him for publishing a book that I truly believe should be required reading in every school.
The timing of my reading of this book could not have been more prescient either. According to my Goodreads account, I started listening to this audiobook on February 19, 2022. Five days later, on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin's Russia invaded Ukraine in force, dragging the bloodshed of the Bloodlands into the 21st century. As of April 21, 2022, Ukraine is still in the fight, doing much better than anyone expected, with Russia looking much weaker than everyone expected. But that does not comfort the many millions who have fled their homes or who are under siege. Here again we have the horror of the mundane in number form: nine hundred bodies dug up in a mass grave, three million refugees fleeing across Europe, and who knows how many casualties on both sides in a war upon which the responsibility rests on one man: Vladimir Putin.
Europe, and the world, has hopefully been reminded of the horrors of war. With the rise of certain political figures and parties, it seemed that extremist ideologies were coming back into fashion over the past six years. Now, that future is a little more doubtful, and I can only hope that authoritarianism's violent spread can be contained in the last century. I definitely don't want to live in another world war. Neither should you.
A huge recommend from me to literally everyone who can read. This book is what people think of when they say "you need to learn your history". And if enough people are confronted with the worst of history, maybe we can prevent conflicts like the one we are witnessing in Ukraine right now from happening again.
This book throws a lot of large numbers at you. Five thousand, fourteen thousand, forty thousand, five million, sixteen million. After hearing all of these numbers you start to get almost bored of it. All these numbers are so much, and there's so many of them. It's all so mundane. But then the narrator of the audiobook started listing off the number of casualties during the Holomodor in Ukraine in 1933. And that was the point when I truly understood the concept of the horror of the mundane. It was when I thought to myself "Oh good, at least only two thousand five hundred people starved to death here, unlike the twelve thousand that starved in that other town." The casual nature of that statement stunned me a little. And that moment has perhaps given me a clearer view of how truly awful it must have been to have lived through the 1930s and World War II, or perhaps more accurately, died from it.
Timothy Snyder has written a book that is only enjoyable because it slaps you in the face with the cold, cruel reality of math, which then causes you see the history of Eastern Europe in a much clearer light. Ralph Cosham, the narrator, does a fantastic job at presenting the data in a very sober, sometimes necessarily somber voice.
I'm glad Snyder has covered the atrocities of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They are two of the most destructive nation states in history, furthering two of the most destructive ideologies in history, led by two of the worst madmen in history. Snyder's research unearths and explains the twisted logic of both in a way I've never truly experienced before, and I am thankful to him for publishing a book that I truly believe should be required reading in every school.
The timing of my reading of this book could not have been more prescient either. According to my Goodreads account, I started listening to this audiobook on February 19, 2022. Five days later, on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin's Russia invaded Ukraine in force, dragging the bloodshed of the Bloodlands into the 21st century. As of April 21, 2022, Ukraine is still in the fight, doing much better than anyone expected, with Russia looking much weaker than everyone expected. But that does not comfort the many millions who have fled their homes or who are under siege. Here again we have the horror of the mundane in number form: nine hundred bodies dug up in a mass grave, three million refugees fleeing across Europe, and who knows how many casualties on both sides in a war upon which the responsibility rests on one man: Vladimir Putin.
Europe, and the world, has hopefully been reminded of the horrors of war. With the rise of certain political figures and parties, it seemed that extremist ideologies were coming back into fashion over the past six years. Now, that future is a little more doubtful, and I can only hope that authoritarianism's violent spread can be contained in the last century. I definitely don't want to live in another world war. Neither should you.
A huge recommend from me to literally everyone who can read. This book is what people think of when they say "you need to learn your history". And if enough people are confronted with the worst of history, maybe we can prevent conflicts like the one we are witnessing in Ukraine right now from happening again.
spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
3.0
Traduction française par Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat.
wtb_michael's review
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
4.5
Astonishingly rigorous, dizzyingly bleak and utterly crucial
mihai_andrei's review against another edition
4.0
4.0
O carte foarte bine scrisă, dar ediția românească abundă de greșeli, unele (vag) amuzante, altele supărătoare, traducerea e pe alocuri neinspirată, iar impresia generală e a unui amatoricesc deranjant pentru un behemot editorial românesc, cum e Humanitas.
O carte foarte bine scrisă, dar ediția românească abundă de greșeli, unele (vag) amuzante, altele supărătoare, traducerea e pe alocuri neinspirată, iar impresia generală e a unui amatoricesc deranjant pentru un behemot editorial românesc, cum e Humanitas.