20 November 2016
How do you solve a problem like Crimea? The optimistic answer is that Russia's annexation was wrong, that the sanctions are right and that the West should continue putting pressure on Russia until it grudgingly relents and returns Crimea to Ukraine. The pessimistic answer is that Russia's annexation was wrong …
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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 …
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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 …
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11 December 2013
For what it's worth:
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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 …
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8 February 2010
The list of countries who recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia has been increasing ever so slowly over the course of the last two years - at the rate of about one country every six months - so that the question arises: who's next?
Belarus was long seen to be the country that …
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