RaveThe Financial TimesCompelling ... Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the history of that troubled region up to and including the present.
Dominic Lieven
PositiveThe Financial Times (UK)... stimulating ... read it for what you will learn about the past and for sheer enjoyment. For you will find wonderful, appalling, even mundane human beings, sketched with a sure grasp both of the small details and the grand picture by an historian who ranges freely and with enthusiasm across time and space ... There are moments when the sheer volume of information threatens to overwhelm the story, or when Lieven cannot resist going down an interesting byway. Does the reader really need a long disquisition on the nature of monarchy in pre-first world war Europe? Or quite so much on Maria Theresa’s many children? ... For the most part, though, the author balances the role of the individual emperor with the great forces, from geography to timing, that make empires possible ... While Lieven is careful not to make a case for empires and their methods of government, he does point to their strengths: the ability of good ones to bring disparate peoples together, to allow minorities a certain amount of freedom or to deal with large-scale problems. But where are the equivalents of the wise emperors of the past? Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump?
Sean McMeekin
MixedThe Financial Times (UK)McMeekin is a formidable researcher, working in several languages, and he is prepared to pose the big questions and make judgments. He does not spare the incompetence of Stalin as a strategist or the reckless disregard for life of the Soviet commanders. The story of the war itself is well told and impressive in its scope, ranging as it does from the domestic politics of small states such as Yugoslavia and Finland to the global context. It reminds us, too, of what Soviet \'liberation\' actually meant for eastern Europe ... It is a pity therefore that we get relatively little on Stalin the man, his ideas and his world view ... When we look at the past we must always remind ourselves of what were the real choices before decision makers. McMeekin, in his eagerness to persuade the jury, relies too much on counterfactuals ... McMeekin is right that we have for too long cast the second world war as the good one. His book will, as he must hope, make us re-evaluate the war and its consequences. A warning, though. In looking at the decisions and compromises with Stalin made by the British and Americans, let us remember what they faced and consider the possible and not, like the movie, the fantastic.
Timothy Snyder
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe road to unfreedom, as Snyder sees it, is one that runs right over the Enlightenment faith in reason and the reasonableness of others — the very underpinning, that is, of our institutions and values. Recent examples, found around the world, demonstrate both how important conventions and mutual respect are as a way of maintaining order and civility — and how easily and carelessly they can be smashed ... Snyder makes a valuable distinction between the narratives of inevitability and those of eternity. The former are like Marxism or faith in the triumph of the free market: They say that history is moving inexorably toward a clear end. The latter do not see progress but an endless cycle of humiliation, death and rebirth that repeats itself ... Liberal democracy is being undermined from within, but not only from within. In addition to the general malaise Snyder identifies, The Road to Unfreedom also points to human agency — in particular that of Vladimir Putin ... So what can the concerned citizen do about the decay in our public life? We must, Snyder says, keep digging for the facts and exposing falsehoods.
Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro
MixedThe Financial TimesThe Internationalists is a fascinating and challenging book, which raises gravely important issues for the present. At times, however, the authors’ enthusiasm runs away with them. Was the Kellogg-Briand Pact really 'among the most transformative events of human history'? Did it start a process that reshaped the world map, catalysed the human rights revolution, and fuelled the rapid growth of international institutions? Was the second world war primarily about the conflict between the Old and the New Orders? Overstating a case doesn’t make it better ... If you believe ideas matter and that views change, and like the authors I do, we have far more international acceptance of the criminality of war and of our common responsibility for each other. Given the state of the world, The Internationalists has come along at the right moment.
