Despite repeated warnings from the White House, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. Why did Putin start the war―and why has it unfolded in previously unimaginable ways? Ukrainians have resisted a superior military; the West has united, while Russia grows isolated.

Serhii Plokhy, leading historian of Ukraine and the Cold War, traces this conflict to post-Soviet tensions. Providing a broad historial context and an examination of Ukraine and Russia’s ideas and cultures, as well as domestic and international politics, Plokhy reveals that while this new Cold War was not inevitable, it was predictable. Ukraine, Plokhy argues, has remained central to Russia’s idea of itself even as Ukrainians have followed a radically different path. It is now more than ever the most volatile fault line between authoritarianism and democratic Europe as a new division of the world emerges around the economic superpowers of the United States and China.

Such an auspicious beginning. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum was supposed to give Ukraine a security guarantee from the West for handing over the nuclear weapons on their soil. If Russia was ever to attack them, the West would be there. Didn’t quite work out that way.

I think I know why Putin and Trump get along so well. They both think that, just because they say something, it’s true. Putin seems to be under the assumption that Ukraine is part of Russia just because it was at one point. So I guess France should hand over Normandy to England.

Why, exactly, did Putin invade Ukraine? While many believe it was his desire to rebuild the USSR, Plokhy gives another reason. Most Russians, including Putin apparently, believe that their nation originated in Kyiv, the center of what was known as Kyivan Rus, and encompassed parts of what are now Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The fact that that particular entity was destroyed by the Mongols in the thirteenth century doesn’t seem to mean a great deal in Putin’s delusional mind.

It was awful, reliving Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, remembering Russia’s atrocities and seeing them played out again on the pages of the book. I often had to stop, I was so infuriated, that Putin could, and still is, getting away with murder. Literally.

It’s amazing how much Russia has tried to dominate Ukraine over the last century and more. The bizarre thinking of that country’s leaders is hard to fathom.





Mount TBR 2025 Book Links


Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson
2. The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy #1) by Pat Barker
3. Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year #1) by T.J. Klune
4. The Traitor's Son by Wendy Johnson
5. All That Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson by Mark Griffin
6. You Like It Darker by Stephen King, Thomas Hayman (Illustrations)
7. The Fireman by Joe Hill
8. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
9. Lark Ascending by Silas House
10. Memorials by Richard Chizmar
11. The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhii Plokhy

The definitive behind-the-scenes story of Trump’s final year in office, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, the Pulitzer-Prize winning reporters and authors of the #1 New York Times bestseller, A Very Stable Genius

The true story of what took place in Donald Trump’s White House during a disastrous 2020 has never before been told in full. What was really going on around the president, as the government failed to contain the coronavirus and over half a million Americans perished? Who was influencing Trump after he refused to concede an election he had clearly lost and spread lies about election fraud? To answer these questions, Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig reveal a dysfunctional and bumbling presidency’s inner workings in unprecedented, stunning detail.

Focused on Trump and the key players around him—the doctors, generals, senior advisers, and Trump family members— Rucker and Leonnig provide a forensic account of the most devastating year in a presidency like no other. Their sources were in the room as time and time again Trump put his personal gain ahead of the good of the country. These witnesses to history tell the story of him longing to deploy the military to the streets of American cities to crush the protest movement in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, all to bolster his image of strength ahead of the election. These sources saw firsthand his refusal to take the threat of the coronavirus seriously—even to the point of allowing himself and those around him to be infected. This is a story of a nation sabotaged—economically, medically, and politically—by its own leader, culminating with a groundbreaking, minute-by-minute account of exactly what went on in the Capitol building on January 6, as Trump’s supporters so easily breached the most sacred halls of American democracy, and how the president reacted. With unparalleled access, Rucker and Leonnig explain and expose exactly who enabled—and who foiled—Trump as he sought desperately to cling to power.

A classic and heart-racing work of investigative reporting, this book is destined to be read and studied by citizens and historians alike for decades to come.


I already knew he was crazy; all one has to do is be something of a new junkie (which I am,) to have picked up on that. But I was hoping to maybe learn something new pertaining to his last year in office, considering that that’s when the crazy really manifested itself. Unfortunately, that was not to be. What was worse, is that it was like living through that nightmare all over again.

Not that it’s not a good book. It is. It’s succinct and easy to read, but it’s probably more for the reader who hasn’t already followed this bat-sh*t crazy man through his, thankfully, one term in office. We’re already getting even more information.

Will I read another book about this gruesome time in our history? Probably not. A person can only take so much. Besides, it’s that time of year for tamer frights.

...and Collective Memory in the Middle East by Kim Ghattas




The bestselling author tells the gripping story of the real roots of the Middle East Sunni-Shia conflict in the 1979 Iran Revolution that changed the region forever.

Black Wave is a paradigm-shifting recasting of the modern history of the Middle East, telling the largely unexplored story of the rivalry between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran--a rivalry born out of the sparks of the 1979 Iranian revolution--that has dramatically transformed the culture, identity, and collective memory of millions of Muslims over four decades. Like George Packer did in The Unwinding, Kim Ghattas follows everyday citizens whose lives have been affected by the geopolitical drama, making her account both immediate and intimate.

Most Americans assume that extremism, Sunni-Shia antagonism, and anti-Americanism have always existed in the Middle East, but prior to 1979, Saudi Arabia and Iran were working allies. It was only after that year--a remarkable turning point--that Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia began to use religion as a tool in their competition for dominance in the region, igniting the culture wars that led to the 1991 American invasion of Iraq, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the rise of ISIS.

Ghattas shows how Saudi Arabia and Iran went from allies against the threat of communism from Russia, with major roles in the US anti-Soviet strategy, to mortal enemies that use religious conservatism to incite division and unrest from Egypt to Pakistan. Black Wave will significantly influence both perception of and conversation about the modern history of the Middle East.

I can’t recommend this book more highly. It’s a must read for those who wish to know how and why the situation in the Middle East came to be, and for those, especially in the US, who think they know why. Chances are, they don’t.

Beginning with a short history of the Middle East, from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the dethronement of the Shah of Iran, the book then moves on to the creation of Israel. It was on land that Palestinians had lived on for centuries, creating a shift in Arab thinking. They needed something to unite the Arab people, and a stronger focus on religion seemed to do the trick. Unfortunately, it would bring about an intellectual and cultural darkness that would slowly engulf the Arab world.

1979 seems to have been the focal point, with the rise of the Ayatollah and the oppression brought on by the Saud family of Saudia Arabia. Both countries would be transformed, and then, spreading that transformation, one country at a time, would bring darkness and oppression.

First to go would be Syria and Lebanon, the “black wave” inundating Beirut, a city once known as the Paris of the Middle East. The ravages of sectarianism would continue, moving into Pakistan and Afghanistan. Unaware, or unmindful that Saudi money was behind most of the trouble, the US would make matters worse with the invasion of Iraq. Sadaam’s removal would unleash all the pent-up anger and religious zeal and allow Iran’s power to grow.

Egypt’s story is probably the cruelest of all. It’s ill-fated revolution was crushed by Saudi Arabian money, it’s final ruler, Sisi, little more than a Saudi puppet.

Isis would bring things full circle. Its Islamic State would be compared to the founding of Saudi Arabia in 1926, as both would be born through the destruction of the past and much of the present.




( Mount TBR 2020 Book Links )

American diplomacy is under siege. Offices across the State Department sit empty, while abroad the military-industrial complex has assumed the work once undertaken by peacemakers. We’re becoming a nation that shoots first and asks questions later.

In an astonishing account ranging from Washington, D.C., to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Korea in the years since 9/11, acclaimed journalist and former diplomat Ronan Farrow illuminates one of the most consequential and poorly understood changes in American history. His firsthand experience in the State Department affords a personal look at some of the last standard-bearers of traditional statecraft, including Richard Holbrooke, who made peace in Bosnia and died while trying to do so in Afghanistan. Farrow’s narrative is richly informed by interviews with whistleblowers, policymakers, and a warlord, from Henry Kissinger to Hillary Clinton. Diplomacy, Farrow argues, has declined after decades of political cowardice, short-sightedness, and outright malice—but it may just offer America a way out of a world at war.

Given the state of our government at the moment, the book is something of a must-read. While Farrow often cites diplomats whose endeavors may have made things worse, it becomes clear that we are much worse off without them. Their decline seems to go hand-in-hand with our own in regards to our influence around the world. We now offer a stick instead of an olive branch, as our military steps into the void left, and their own power multiplying exponentially.

Though Trump’s presidency has exacerbated the problem, it certainly didn’t start it. 9/11 seems to have turned us into a country of cowards, seeing danger behind every corner, and more willing to throw the military at the problem than try to work things out. With that way of thinking, it’s no surprise that presidents turned more to generals than diplomats, starting us on the road we’re still traveling.




Mount TBR 2019 Book Links

Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.


1. The Outsider
2. War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence


BOOK BINGO

1. Fantasy, Scifi, Paranormal - The Outsider by Stephen King
15. Title is at Least Six Words Long - War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence by Ronan Farrow