Ukraine

While we are watching the Ukranian people fight Russian soldiers and dodge Russian missles, a few of us may be confused about the country itself. World leaders have bantered around different narratives about the nation for the past decade. To get a broader scope on the current conflict and to understand the roots of the issue, one needs to go back in history to a time when the East and the West were forming alliances and vying for territory–the Ottoman Empire and the Catholic Church–kings and queens–The Third Reich and the Soviet Union. I suggest we all read The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, which was written by Serhil Plokhy and published in May of 2021 in paperback. Plokhy is a professor in the Department of History at Harvard University. He is also the Director of the Ukrainian Reserach Institute at the university.

The Wall Street Journal calls the book “An examplary account of Europe’s least-known large country.” It will bring to focus Falkner’s well-known line, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”