I went in expecting this book to be mostly history, through the lens of geography; it proved me wrong, right off the bat, by talking about as-of-its-publishing current affairs in Russia, and why Russia was doing what it was doing. Later chapters did devote more time to history, but overall, this was more of a political science book, with a little bit of history, through the lens of geography. I suppose the foreword having been written by a former head of MI6 was a hint about what sort of book it was going to be.
None of that is to say it was a bad book, just not remotely what I expected. Maybe not the best in ebook form, although to really get the benefit of the maps I think it’d be better to be sat down with both this book and a proper, full-sized atlas, rather than relying on the insets at the beginning of each chapter.
An interesting book; check it out.1
- This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩