1 June 2015
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language — How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
David W. Anthony
Princeton University Press, Princeton
November 2007
566 pages
ISBN: 978-0-691-05887-0
Probably the first great achievement of historical linguistics was the discovery of the Indo-European language family. We now know that …
Read the rest of this entry
5 March 2014
Black Sea — The Birth Place of Civilisation and Barbarism
Neal Ascherson
first edition:
Jonathan Cape, London
June 1995
320 pages
ISBN: 978-0-224-04102-7
second edition:
Vintage Books, London
October 2007
320 pages
ISBN: 978-0-099-52046-7
Black Sea is a wonderful book. Not a conventional history that chronologically works its way through the …
Read the rest of this entry
29 January 2014
Chechnya Diary — A War Correspondent's Story of Surviving the War in Chechnya
Thomas Goltz
Thomas Dunne Books, New York
October 2003
302 pages
ISBN: 978-0-312-26874-9
The village of Samashki was the site of a massacre during the first Chechen war in which more than hundred residents were executed by Russian …
Read the rest of this entry
29 May 2013
Kleine landjes — Berichten uit de Kaukasus
Jelle Brandt Corstius
Prometheus, Amsterdam
February 2009
170 pages
ISBN: 978-90-446-1311-7
Kleine landjes is an account of a series of trips made by the Dutch journalist Jelle Brandt Corstius, generally stationed in Moscow, to Chechnya, Kalmykia, Abkhazia, Karachay-Cherkessia and Ossetia. It is not really …
Read the rest of this entry
8 May 2013
Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus — A World-System Biography
Georgi M. Derluguian
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
July 2005
416 pages
ISBN: 978-0-226-14282-1
A description of Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus must begin with an explanation of its somewhat unpractical, yet intriguing title. The admirer in question is …
Read the rest of this entry
27 March 2013
Eight Pieces of Empire — A 20-Year Journey through the Soviet Collapse
Lawrence Scott Sheets
Crown Publishers, New York
November 2011
336 pages
ISBN: 978-0-307-39582-5
The publication of Eight Pieces of Empire is good news, because Lawrence Scott Sheets — currently South Caucasus project director for the International Crisis Group — is one …
Read the rest of this entry
21 February 2013
Caucasus — In the wake of warriors
Nicholas Griffin
Review, London
August 2001
256 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7472-3630-6
(In subsequent years republished with a variety of different subtitles (A Journey, A Journey in the Crucible of Civilisation, A Journey to the Land between Christianity and Islam and Mountain Men and Holy Wars …
Read the rest of this entry
6 February 2013
The Ghost of Freedom — A History of the Caucasus
Charles King
Oxford University Press, New York
January 2008
314 pages
ISBN: 978-0-19-517775-6
The Ghost of Freedom is not really a history of the Caucasus, but rather a history of the Caucasus and Russia's involvement therein since 1800. Moreover, much of …
Read the rest of this entry
30 January 2013
Let Our Fame be Great — Journeys Among the Defiant Peoples of the Caucasus
Oliver Bullough
Allen Lane, London
March 2010
508 pages
ISBN: 978-1-846-14141-6
Let Our Fame be Great takes its name from an episode of North Caucasus mythology. In the tale, the Narts — the heroes of these stories — are …
Read the rest of this entry
19 December 2012
The Caucasus — an introduction
Thomas de Waal
Oxford University Press, New York
August 2010
272 pages
ISBN: 978-0-1953-9976-9
It is always possible to find fault with a book if only one makes an effort. In the case of The Caucasus, Thomas de Waal's new book, the most serious issue thus …
Read the rest of this entry