Can anyone recommend a book ? ? ?

[2tallbill]

Can anyone recommend a book on an area or two (in English) of or about the
FSU that doesn't read like an ultra boring college text book?

I would especially like something written like James Michener's Poland or Alaska
or a book like those that Wilbur Smith wrote about Africa. I am sure that there
some out there that are entertaining and still manage to cover historical events,
 and times and, places. but sometimes take a liberty or two in conversations between
individuals who were there living there lives at the time?

I have a book by Magocsi and another by Subtney (spelled wrong I lent it to my Dad)
about Ukraine but they are mind numbingly boring to dig into.

Thank you,

Bill

[Olga_Mouse]

Can anyone recommend a book on an area or two (in English) of or about the FSU that doesn't read like an ultra boring college text book?

Sure 

Russian Bride Guide by Smith & Maslova 

[Manny]

I have these:

Kremlin Rising by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser - about Russia since Putin.
Russia by Philip Longworth - The once & future empire from pre-history to Putin.
Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya - (the one who got killed for it!)

I enjoyed them all. Philip Longworth's is the hard going one of the three, the other two draw the reader in and keep him there.

[BelleZeBoob]

The Mendeleyev's thread 'How Russians Think' would make a better book than most printed editions. Ma parole!

[Ward_Cleaver]

Doctor Zhivago?
Crime and Punishment? - I didn't really like this one so I didn't finish it.  (yet)
We the Living? 

I don't know if these are the kind books you are looking for or not.

[ECR844]

Geoffery Hosking Russia and the Russians:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=Geoffery+Hosking+Russia+and+the+Russians

Robert Littell (any novel really he has some great ones about Russia) Agent in Place:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Agent-in-Place/Robert-Littell/e/9780143035640/?itm=9

Rulers and Victims : The Russians in the Soviet Union
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Rulers-and-Victims/Geoffrey-Hosking/e/9780674021785/?itm=3

He also ahs lots of good ones: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?ATH=Geoffrey+Hosking

[mendeleyev]

Belle, thank you!  I am humbled and grateful.

Bill, I like every book mentioned above in the thread so far.  You're getting some great suggestions from our members!

Here is some of the light/easily readable stuff:

- Culture Shock, A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquettte, Anna Pavlovskaya.
- Klass: How Russians Really Live, David K. Willis (paperback--one of the very best).
- The Moscow Correspondents, Whitman Bassow (fascinating to follow Western journalists stories about their time living in Russia!).
- The Russians, Hedrick Smith (paperback, groundbreaking!).
- Russia, David K Shipler (paperback).
- The Shadow of the Winter Palace, Edward Crankshaw (history leading up to revolution, 1825-1917).
- Alexander Dolgun's Story, Alex Dolgun (about the 3000+ American Ford employees who were trapped in Russia when WWII broke out.  Most, including children went to the Gulag, five made it out alive and 3 eventually returned to America in the 1970's).
- Red Victory, W. Bruce Lincoln (large but very readable, and if you want to understand Russia, this history of the Red/White civil war is valuable).
- Two Lives, One Russia, Nicholas Daniloff (hardbount, American journalist, his parents immigrated to USA and he returned to live in Russia as a journalist, arrested for "spying" just days before returning to the USA.  Reagan-Thatcher-Gorbachev did some "trades" and he was released.  Gorbachev later issued an official apology, admitting that Daniloff had been set up by the KGB.)

[David Rochlin]

If you read "War and Peace," by Tolstoy, that is THE ONE BOOK, if you read just one, that will force all Russians and Ukrainains to regard you as less than a barbarian, (even though they might not have read it themselves...)
   It is very readable, except for Tolstoy's boring political theories, which purport to prove that Napoleon was just a lucky dog, who was in the right place at the right time, and wasn't really a genius.
Mostly it is a story about love, the kind of love that Tolstoy was interested in, usually involved characters who don't love equally, one partner usually loves more than the other.  So, not only do you learn about Russian history, but you learn about Cossacks, Russian romance, feudal economics, and other aspects of Russian culture, which still offer insights into Russians and Ukrainians, today.