Benjamin Nathans

Benjamin Nathans is the Alan Charles Kors Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement. (April 2025)

The Enigma of George Kennan

The Enigma of George Kennan

Frank Costigliola’s biography of George Kennan explores the contrast between the supreme confidence of his policy prescriptions and the perpetual turbulence of his inner life.

Kennan: A Life Between Worlds

by Frank Costigliola

April 24, 2025 issue

Bureaucrat’s Honor

Bureaucrat’s Honor

Three memoirs by Trump administration officials reveal the integrity and moral discipline of the so-called deep state in the face of corruption and philistinism.

Lessons from the Edge

by Marie Yovanovitch

Here, Right Matters: An American Story

by Alexander S. Vindman

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

by Fiona Hill

April 21, 2022 issue

Stalin’s Lawyers at Nuremberg

Stalin’s Lawyers at Nuremberg

The Soviets were not just part of the prosecution team at Nuremberg; they were instrumental in defining the crimes of which the Nazi leaders were accused.

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II

by Francine Hirsch

September 23, 2021 issue

Profiles in Decency

Profiles in Decency

Pravo na Pamiat [The Right to Memory]

a documentary film directed by Ludmila Gordon

Meeting Gorbachev

a documentary film directed by Werner Herzog and André Singer

April 23, 2020 issue

Rewriting Human Rights

Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World

by Samuel Moyn

Necessary Evil: How to Fix Finance by Saving Human Rights

by David Kinley

December 5, 2019 issue

To Hell and Back

To Hell and Back

Kolyma Stories: Volume One

by Varlam Shalamov, translated from the Russian and with an introduction by Donald Rayfield

December 6, 2018 issue

Bolshevism’s New Believers

Bolshevism’s New Believers

Yuri Slezkine’s monumental new study, ‘The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution’

The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution

by Yuri Slezkine

November 23, 2017 issue

Russia: The Joyful New Activism

Protest in Putin’s Russia

by Mischa Gabowitsch

August 17, 2017 issue

The Real Power of Putin

The Real Power of Putin

Nine recent books examine his rise and the direction of Russian politics

The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin

by Steven Lee Myers

Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia

by Anne Garrels

Authoritarian Russia: Analyzing Post-Soviet Regime Changes

by Vladimir Gel’man

The Strong State in Russia: Development and Crisis

by Andrei P. Tsygankov

Putinism: Russia and Its Future with the West

by Walter Laqueur

The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship Under Yeltsin and Putin

by David Satter

Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism

by Charles Clover

Russia and the New World Disorder

by Bobo Lo

Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

by Agnia Grigas

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September 29, 2016 issue

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