Making his way from the Polish border in the west, through the capital city and the heart of the 2014 revolution, to the eastern frontline near the Russian border, seasoned war reporter Tim Judah brings a rare glimpse of the reality behind the headlines.
...[a] grim and important new book ... In Wartime is a fast-paced and very topical book, an old-fashioned series of magazine-crafted war dispatches, but Judah's expertise is appealingly ambitious in its scope. But the book's main strength is in its detail-work ... Readers won't forget the pathos and violence Tim Judah has described, and they owe him a vote of thanks for that.
...despite its flaws, In Wartime is essential for anyone who wants to understand events in Ukraine and what they portend for the West ... Mr. Judah has written the first important book about the war in Ukraine, and it should be on the shelf of every diplomat and journalist shipping out to the region
...[Judah] builds up a plausible composite portrait of a Ukraine ideologically bifurcated yet still sadly homogeneous in its poverty, isolation, and insecurity. Unfortunately, we can hardly double-check his picture, for he serves up his interviews in watery stews: an original word or two, once in a while a verbatim phrase, and all the rest summarized by him. Why on earth an experienced journalist would do this is beyond me...This is so ubiquitous a fault in his book as to nearly extinguish what could have been a deep and diverse compilation of voices ... Judah gives a very helpful overview of Ukraine’s systemic economic difficulties...he is interested in structures and world pictures. He often succeeds in making his abstractions vivid ... he is brave, thoughtful, self-effacing, and effective.
