Here are 100 books that Holy Russia and Christian Europe fans have personally recommended if you like
Holy Russia and Christian Europe.
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I have been a scholar of Orthodox Christianity for more than 20 years; & authored or (co-)edited several books. It took the fall of communism to overcome the relative poverty of Western literature & gain better knowledge of the Orthodox religious landscape. Personally, I am interested in the relationship between Orthodoxy and culture/politics. This relationship runs deep into the heart of several Orthodox nations – as the war in Ukraine aptly demonstrates. By the 21st century, Orthodox Christianity is no longer exclusively affiliated with its historical birthplace of Eastern and Southeastern Europe but there are millions of Orthodox Christians in North America and Western Europe.
The separation of Christianity into a Roman Catholic and an Orthodox branch is a topic that conventionally has not received extensive treatment in Western scholarship.
The history of the relationship between these two branches of Christianity is also conventionally narrated from within Western lenses.
In this regard, this book is an invaluable corrective: It describes four critical and formative centuries of religious history from within the viewpoint of Orthodox Christianity.
It is an authoritative, indispensable study for understanding historical events (such as the Crusades and the Great Schism) from a perspective quite different from conventional Western histories of Christianity.
This text explores the history of the Eastern Church, spreading from Byzantium to the Orthodox Churches of the Balkans and Russia. It also examines the native Eastern Churches of Egypt, Ethiopia, Syria, Armenia and Georgia, and in the process exposes the many factors which contributed to the Christian disunity in the Middle Ages. The book also treats the impact on the East of such movements as the revolutionary Reform Papacy, the crusades, scolasticism and concilarism.
I have been a scholar of Orthodox Christianity for more than 20 years; & authored or (co-)edited several books. It took the fall of communism to overcome the relative poverty of Western literature & gain better knowledge of the Orthodox religious landscape. Personally, I am interested in the relationship between Orthodoxy and culture/politics. This relationship runs deep into the heart of several Orthodox nations – as the war in Ukraine aptly demonstrates. By the 21st century, Orthodox Christianity is no longer exclusively affiliated with its historical birthplace of Eastern and Southeastern Europe but there are millions of Orthodox Christians in North America and Western Europe.
Although the faith has a history of nearly two centuries in the New World, to this day, there are only a handful of books about Orthodox Christianity in North America.
Among them, this is an easy-to-read monograph that offers a narrative of the faith’s history in the New World, going all the way back to the first Alaskan communities and later on to the institution of ethnic churches in the 19th and 20th century US.
The author offers a succinct overview of the important developments within various US-based ethnic communities and of 21st-century challenges. It is highly recommended because of the depth and breadth of its coverage.
This book follows the momentous events and notable individuals in the history of the Orthodox dioceses in America. Erickson explains the huge impact Orthodox Christianity has had on the history of immigration, and how the religion has changed as a result of the American experience. Lively, engaging, and thoroughly researched, the book unveils insightful portrait of an ancient faith in a new world.
I have been a scholar of Orthodox Christianity for more than 20 years; & authored or (co-)edited several books. It took the fall of communism to overcome the relative poverty of Western literature & gain better knowledge of the Orthodox religious landscape. Personally, I am interested in the relationship between Orthodoxy and culture/politics. This relationship runs deep into the heart of several Orthodox nations – as the war in Ukraine aptly demonstrates. By the 21st century, Orthodox Christianity is no longer exclusively affiliated with its historical birthplace of Eastern and Southeastern Europe but there are millions of Orthodox Christians in North America and Western Europe.
John Meyendorff’s works are indispensable for understanding the theology and history of Orthodox Christianity.
While several of his contributions belong to the must-read list for students of Orthodox Christianity, this book in particular offers a lucid account and an indispensable introduction to the broader and enduring problematic regarding the deep-seated connections between Byzantium and the historical development of the Orthodox Church.
The book addresses a series of historical events rarely researched and studied and it is a pioneer work highly suited for scholars of religious history.
For more than a millennium the Byzantine Empire and its capital, Constantinople guided the spiritual destinies of the Christian East. Even after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the influence of its culture, thought and institutions remained powerful, above all in the Orthodox Church.
In this collection of essays, Fr John Meyendorff, one of the most prominent Orthodox historians and theologians of our day, delineates the many facets of this Byzantine legacy. After an initial survey of the Byzantine Church, he explores such varies subjects as Byzantine political ideology, spirituality and ecclesiology. He clearly demonstrates the significance of Byzantium not…
I have been a scholar of Orthodox Christianity for more than 20 years; & authored or (co-)edited several books. It took the fall of communism to overcome the relative poverty of Western literature & gain better knowledge of the Orthodox religious landscape. Personally, I am interested in the relationship between Orthodoxy and culture/politics. This relationship runs deep into the heart of several Orthodox nations – as the war in Ukraine aptly demonstrates. By the 21st century, Orthodox Christianity is no longer exclusively affiliated with its historical birthplace of Eastern and Southeastern Europe but there are millions of Orthodox Christians in North America and Western Europe.
This is perhaps the most informative and lucid account of a major historical event in Russia’s religious history.
Patriarch Nikon’s reforms caused a major split in Russia and the formation of Old Believers. Needless to say, Nikon’s reforms remain a hot topic in Russia’s religious history up to the present.
In this careful and quite detailed study, the author reconstructs the entire process of the two successive councils that led to the schism and addresses the complex relations among the Court, the Patriarch, and other religious and non-religious actors.
It is written in a detailed and very careful manner that allows the reader to grasp the author’s rationale.
The book offers newfound insights onto the dynamics that propelled the reforms and the reasons that led to their rejection, leading to the formation of the Old Believers.
The reform of the liturgical books conducted in Muscovite Russia in the mid-17th century was an alignment of Russina liturgical usage with contemporary Greek practice. Historians have up to now generally accepted the "official" interpretation of the reform as a "correcting" made on the basis of ancient Greek and Slavic sources. In fact, the reform was based exclusively on "contemporary" sources chiefly the 1602 Venice "Euchologion" (Greek) and 17th century South-Slavic editions from Kiev and Striatin. Far from being a "return to sources", or a "correction", the reform consisted simply in the uncritical transposition of contemporary Greek practice onto Russian…
David Satter is a leading commentator on Russia and the former Soviet Union. He is the author of five books on Russia and the creator of a documentary film on the fall of the U.S.S.R. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He has been a fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, and an associate of the Henry Jackson Society in London.
Vesselin Nedkov was in Moscow on a business trip when he decided to buy a ticket to the Broadway style musical Nord-Ost, which was being shown at the Theater on Dubrovka. This book is his harrowing account of the ordeal as the theater and its thousand visitors were seized by armed terrorists and held for 57 hours before being "liberated" by the Russian special forces who attacked the theater with lethal gas. Rich in detail, his book also raises the many unanswered questions about the massive loss of innocent life.
To celebrate the last night of a business trip in Moscow, Canadian resident Vesselin Nedkov and a friend picked up two tickets to the hottest musical in town. Halfway through the show, his life was changed forever. 57 Hours is Nedkov's harrowing account of being trapped between two immovable and unpredictable forces: inside the theatre, suicidal Chechen rebels, loaded with explosives, demanded an end to the bloody civil war that was ravaging Chechnya; outside, Russian special forces prepared to storm the theatre, refusing to negotiate with the rebels. Through fifty-seven hours of fear and fatigue, Nedkov discovered courage and ingenuity…
From the time I was a kid, I loved books about real people who lived through difficult and colorful times. As a writer, I’ve written about people whose lives fascinated and inspired me like Franklin Law Olmsted (The Man Who Made Parks) I believe that a riveting story or memoir gives the reader a strong sense of a person and the times in which they lived. And after reading one of these books, I wanted to know more about the person and the period in which they lived.
This engaging graphic novel follows twelve-year-old Dasha as she is forced to separate from her mom who leaves for America to make a better life for the two of them. The spare yet touching text brings us into Dasha’s world in Russia and her fears and hopes for a new life. Based on Tolstikova’s own experiences, the book draws the reader into Dasha’s fears and joys.
It is the early 1990s in Moscow, and political change is in the air. But Dasha is more worried about her own challenges as she negotiates family, friendships and school without her mother. Just as she begins to find her own feet, she gets word that she is to join her mother in America - a place that seems impossibly far from everything and everyone she loves.
Dasha Tolstikova's major talent is on full display in this gorgeous and subtly illustrated graphic novel.
I am a primary care doctor who is fascinated by my patient’s stories and what they reveal about their lives, their illnesses, and their pathways to recovery. I have always been a lover of literature related to the human condition and “the big questions,” having majored in Russian Language and Literature as an undergraduate. All the books I have chosen were written by physicians who were accomplished not only in the sciences but in the arts. I hope you enjoy this hybridization of disciplines as much as I have!
In these stories, I felt how Chekhov was both an astute clinician as well as an observant and empathic student of the human condition. His story, “Gooseberries,” elicited in me the palpable and infectious sense of unadulterated joy that one can experience when swimming naked in a country pond, including in the rain!
The stories carried me to a different time and place, yet somehow connected me to their characters as if they were present in my life now, alive even.
Anton Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story, also wrote five works long enough to be called short novels-here brought together in one volume for the first time, in a masterly new translation by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
The Steppe-the most lyrical of the five-is an account of a nine-year-old boy's frightening journey by wagon train across the steppe of southern Russia. The Duel sets two decadent figures-a fanatical rationalist and a man of literary sensibility-on a collision course that ends in a series of surprising reversals. In The Story of an…
I have an amazing daughter in my life, and I want there to be more books for her to read that feature strong, admirable, and good women in leading roles. That’s one of the things I keep an eye out for in the books I read as well as the books I write.
So often, the ‘strong woman’ character is in fact just a really rude, self-centered person, but not here. In Julia Ash’s The ELI Chronicles series, Ruby is a kind-hearted, brilliant scientist trying to do what’s right for her family and for the world. She’s also a great mother and is in a healthy, wholesome marriage with a supportive husband. That’s wonderfully refreshing amidst the plethora of toxic relationships we see in movies and books.
“And while the zombie action is exceptional, readers will likely find themselves rooting for the messy demise of Ox, whose lechery boils from the page.” – Kirkus Reviews
Ruby thinks being a new mother and government microbiologist during a pandemic are hard enough. But then the pathogen mutates into ZOM-B and Russia kidnaps her while on assignment in Taiwan.
Somehow, Ruby is at the center of a global crisis.
Will she find out why? More importantly, can she save her family and perhaps the world?
If only she could break out of the Moscow prison and find her way back…
For three decades I have been the first violinist of the Takács Quartet, performing concerts worldwide and based at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I love the ways in which books, like music, offer new and surprising elements at different stages of life, providing companionship alongside joys and sorrows.
Suspicious of biography, Malcolm dissects various myths about Chekhov’s death in this engaging book that mixes travel writing with acute readings of Chekhov’s stories and plays. As Malcolm visits some of the places crucial to Chekhov’s life and work (the scenes in Ukraine are of course poignant), she moves seamlessly between her own everyday experiences and the predicaments of Chekhov’s characters. In amongst the despair, disappointment, and absurdity she discovers beauty, humor, and occasional visions of hope.
To illuminate the mysterious greatness of Anton Chekhov’s writings, Janet Malcolm takes on three roles: literary critic, biographer, and journalist. Her close readings of the stories and plays are interwoven with episodes from Chekhov’s life and framed by an account of Malcolm’s journey to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Yalta. She writes of Chekhov’s childhood, his relationships, his travels, his early success, and his self-imposed “exile”—always with an eye to connecting them to themes and characters in his work. Lovers of Chekhov as well as those new to his work will be transfixed by Reading Chekhov.
I was born in Romania, a closed society during the Cold War, and I never expected to live anywhere else, especially not in the West. When communism ended, I rushed out of Eastern Europe for the first time, eager to find places and people I could only read about before. I also discovered the power longing and homesickness can have on defining our identities. I moved to the United States, where I now live and work, cherishing my nostalgia for the world I left behind, imperfect as it was. The books I read and write are always, in one way or another, about traveling across cultures and languages.
Walter Benjamin was a Jewish German philosopher who escaped Nazi Germany only to commit suicide upon arrival in Spain.
This book captures an earlier time in his life, when he was still hopeful, an idealist in search of intellectual adventures and political transformation. He went to Moscow to define his political vision and found a city both seductive and elusive. The intense winter scenes in the deep Muscovite cold are unforgettable, even though he mentions them almost in passing.
Benjamin had another reason to go to Moscow: he was in love. But the woman he wished to pursue was also elusive, unavailable both in practical and emotional terms. The book speaks to the fascination Western leftist intellectuals have had with Russian culture and politics, turning to Russia as an alternative to a corrupt West.
Benjamin’s reflections about philosophy, history, and the Moscow of the 1920s makes me fantasize about our…
The life of the German-Jewish literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is a veritable allegory of the life of letters in the twentieth century. Benjamin's intellectual odyssey culminated in his death by suicide on the Franco-Spanish border, pursued by the Nazis, but long before he had traveled to the Soviet Union. His stunning account of that journey is unique among Benjamin's writings for the frank, merciless way he struggles with his motives and conscience.
Perhaps the primary reason for his trip was his affection for Asja Lacis, a Latvian Bolshevik whom he had first met in Capri in 1924…
