Here are 100 books that Looking for Mr. Smith fans have personally recommended if you like
Looking for Mr. Smith.
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I read modern history as an undergraduate and then trained as a primary school teacher. Unsurprisingly, our classroom topics were often historical. My interest in the experiences of people, especially children, in Europe during WWII stems from the fact that my own father grew up in Germany and had numerous tales to tell. My first book was a recount of his wartime childhood. My father gave a copy of his book to his friend and neighbor who happened to be a Polish wartime veteran with his own remarkable stories to tell and this led to three years’ intensive historical research for his book.
Although there has been a great deal of debate about the authenticity of this account, I still enjoyed reading it and comparing it with the accounts told me by my own protagonist.
It is a heroic tale of survival that conveys much of the horror and desperation experienced by so many in wartime Europe, and the displacement and loss suffered by so many, but also the hope and determination to escape and defy all the odds. The parallels with the story my own protagonist told are uncanny.
"I hope The Long Walk will remain as a memorial to all those who live and die for freedom, and for all those who for many reasons could not speak for themselves."--Slavomir Rawicz
In 1941, the author and six other fellow prisoners escaped a Soviet labor camp in Yakutsk--a camp where enduring hunger, cold, untended wounds, untreated illnesses, and avoiding daily executions were everyday feats. Their march--over thousands of miles by foot--out of Siberia, through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India is a remarkable statement about man's desire to be free.
I read modern history as an undergraduate and then trained as a primary school teacher. Unsurprisingly, our classroom topics were often historical. My interest in the experiences of people, especially children, in Europe during WWII stems from the fact that my own father grew up in Germany and had numerous tales to tell. My first book was a recount of his wartime childhood. My father gave a copy of his book to his friend and neighbor who happened to be a Polish wartime veteran with his own remarkable stories to tell and this led to three years’ intensive historical research for his book.
This account covers pretty much the same period of history as in my own protagonist’s tale, beginning with revolution in Russia and its impact on the lives of privileged Polish families.
She describes her life in the family home between the wars and then the exile to Siberia. As a woman, her experiences were different from much of what I had read before and filled with the useful details of everyday life that help to create a vivid picture of a world that was in reality in colour, but we only ever see in the sepia of old photographs.
The book also contains original letters and depositions and is supplemented with valuable historical notes on the context.
This hitherto unpublished first-hand witness account, written in 1968-9, tells the story of a privileged Polish woman whose life was torn apart by the outbreak of the Second World War and Soviet occupation. The account has been translated into English from the original Polish and interwoven with letters and depositions, and is supplemented with commentary and notes for invaluable historical context.
Irena Protassewicz's vivid account begins with the Russian Revolution, followed by a rare insight into the life and mores of the landed gentry of northeastern Poland between the wars, a rural idyll which was to be shattered forever by…
I read modern history as an undergraduate and then trained as a primary school teacher. Unsurprisingly, our classroom topics were often historical. My interest in the experiences of people, especially children, in Europe during WWII stems from the fact that my own father grew up in Germany and had numerous tales to tell. My first book was a recount of his wartime childhood. My father gave a copy of his book to his friend and neighbor who happened to be a Polish wartime veteran with his own remarkable stories to tell and this led to three years’ intensive historical research for his book.
The area of Poland that I had been researching for my own book was known as Kresy – the eastern borderlands.
The Polish family in this book had a long history of living in the region and I found the description of the life long before the Russian Revolution helpful in understanding the context and broadening my perspective on the region and its history.
The book is interspersed with photographs and illustrations that helped me to visualise the atmosphere of their privileged life that was later put into such stark contrast with the deportation to Siberia. The surviving members of the family were at the same Polish Resettlement Corps camp in Herefordshire as my own protagonist.
This is the story of one of the thousands of Polish Families who were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan by the Soviets in 1940. The Glindzicz family had their roots in the Eastern Borderlands of Poland known as Kresy. The family held their lands in this region since before the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1648). The Glindzicz men supported all the major Polish uprisings against Czarist Russia. Mieczyslaw Glindzicz was a local commander in the 1863 Uprising. Despite having fought loyally side by side with Britain throughout the Second World War, when it ended, the Poles of Kresy lost their homes…
I read modern history as an undergraduate and then trained as a primary school teacher. Unsurprisingly, our classroom topics were often historical. My interest in the experiences of people, especially children, in Europe during WWII stems from the fact that my own father grew up in Germany and had numerous tales to tell. My first book was a recount of his wartime childhood. My father gave a copy of his book to his friend and neighbor who happened to be a Polish wartime veteran with his own remarkable stories to tell and this led to three years’ intensive historical research for his book.
As part of his journey, my own protagonist had enlisted in Anders’ Army and took part in the Battle for Monte Cassino.
Of the books that I searched through, this was the most useful both in helping me understand the context of the battle and in picturing the physical landscape of the location, which was essential to my understanding of the account I had been given. The book is evidently very well researched by a highly regarded and undoubted expert in his field.
The five-month Monte Cassino campaign in central Italy is one of the best-known European land battles of World War Two, alongside D-Day and Stalingrad. It has a particular resonance now, because Cassino, with its multitude of participating armies - most notably the American 5th Army under the controversial General Mark Clark - was perhaps the campaign of the Second World War that most closely anticipates the coalition operations of today, with its ever-shifting cast of players stuck in inhospitable, mountainous terrain, pursuing an objective set by unknowing politicians in distant capitals, where victory is difficult to define.
I have studied WW2 and prisoners of war during that period for more than 20 years. They're very much the forgotten soldiers of war in my opinion. Few spoke of their treatment and brutality at the hands of the enemy, starvation, and the psychological effects that they lived with for many years afterward. Marriages fell apart, alcoholism was commonplace and many committed suicide, during a time where the term PTSD hadn't been invented. I've selected books that tell the story from several different perspectives. There were good and bad on all sides and for every ten stories of brutality and murder, there were another ten stories of good men and women who did their best to help the POWs survive.
One of the most heartwrenching stories of POW books you will ever read. This time the author gives an honest yet horrific account of German POWs at the hands of their Russian captors after WWII.
Not a book for the faint-hearted and has no happy endings. A story about how cruel mankind can be.
Originally published in 1960, this compact book tells the true story of a German soldier: from his early childhood during the First World War, through to his harrowing experiences on the frontline during the Word War II, culminating in his capture by the Red Army on 20 December 1942…
I write about Eastern Europe, both past and present, and what it means to have Russia as a neighbor. I write historical fiction and historical thrillers with a soupcon of espionage. I talk about the politics of the day, whether the story is set during WWII or in modern times. While my stories and characters are fictional, I constantly strive to accurately reflect time, place, and, most of all, history. I hope that my novels entertain and inform about a corner of the world folks may not know much about.
This book shows us that not everyone had a devastating experience under the Soviets. I love it because it’s about average people and (somewhat) average events that become extraordinary because of the political circumstances.
What was it like for a teenager to date when the KGB might be watching? How did families manage to cheer at military parades of sophisticated equipment when they couldn’t find toilet paper to buy?
These wonderful stories entertained and informed. They weren’t funny, but a few made me chuckle from the absurdity.
In the 'Workers Paradise' of the Soviet Union what was life like for those on the periphery of the Russian empire? In these short stories, Grazina Pranauskas offers the reader piercing vignettes of everyday existence in Lithuania under a totalitarian regime ...
I write about Eastern Europe, both past and present, and what it means to have Russia as a neighbor. I write historical fiction and historical thrillers with a soupcon of espionage. I talk about the politics of the day, whether the story is set during WWII or in modern times. While my stories and characters are fictional, I constantly strive to accurately reflect time, place, and, most of all, history. I hope that my novels entertain and inform about a corner of the world folks may not know much about.
Mr. Kasekamp’s book is the first substantial reference I found on the great European kingdom called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. For hundreds of years, this religiously and culturally tolerant kingdom ruled the lands from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. It encompassed most of Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, part of Russia, Poland, and more. Andres Kasekamp tells us how it came to be, how it thrived, and how it fell.
He goes on to tell us how the Commonwealth’s progressive ideals were reflected in the freedom that came to Poland and the Baltic countries after WWI and why the resistance to the Soviet occupation of WWII was so passionate.
Now, when I read about Poles, Lithuanians, and others standing alongside their brothers and sisters on today’s battlefields of Ukraine, I understand that it goes beyond protecting home and hearth. It’s about a shared spiritual and political history.
In this key textbook, Andres Kasekamp masterfully traces the development of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, from the northern crusades against Europe's last pagans and Lithuania's rise to become one of medieval Europe's largest states, to their incorporation into the Russian Empire and the creation of their modern national identities. Employing a comparative approach, a particular emphasis is placed upon the last one hundred years, during which the Baltic states achieved independence, endured occupation by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and transformed themselves into members of the European Union.
This is an essential textbook for undergraduate students taking modules on…
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 Soviet Union. He has been affiliated with the Hudson Institute and the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is presently a member of the academic advisory board of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
Vladimir Voinovich was probably the greatest Russian satirical writer since Gogol. After the fall of the U.S.S.R., he was asked if it was still possible to write satire in Russia. He insisted that it was. “The Soviet Union was a giant mental hospital but it was organized,” he explained. “Now, the inmates have been told that they can do whatever they want. So Russia is funnier than ever.”
In this novel, published in 1986, Voinovich demonstrated his stunning ability to divine the future. He described a new Russian regime dominated by state security and based not on Marxism-Leninism but on the teachings of the Orthodox Church. Like Russia today, the regime of his novel tells its citizens that they are surrounded by “three rings of hostility.” The first is the former Soviet republics; the second, the former Soviet satellites, the third, the West – the former “capitalist enemy.” This makes…
In this satire that pokes fun at the future of communism, socialist life, and the Kremlin, an exiled Soviet writer enters a time warp and lands in Moscow in the year 2042.
I’m a professional explainer of Russia. For over 20 years I’ve been studying the country and trying to understand what makes it (and its leaders and people) so intent on attacking those around it and perceived adversaries further afield. That’s never been more important to understand than today when Ukraine and its soldiers are the only thing preventing Russia from once again rampaging across Europe. These books are ones that have helped me understand one part or several parts of the Russia problem, and I think they’ll be helpful for anybody else who wants to, too.
I found the first 100 pages of this book, covering Russia’s early history, to be the clearest explanation anywhere of how the country has developed – or failed to – the way it has.
It was published in 1974, so the frame of reference is the Soviet Union – but the way Tibor Szamuely drew on Russia’s early history to explain the present day is just as valid for post-Communist Russia. That proves the point: that Russia is condemned by its own history, and no social or political upheaval to date has enabled it to break free from that trap and move forward to be a country that can co-exist with others.
This analysis of Russian history traces the essential features of Revolutionary Russia back to medieval times when authoritarian rule first became a prerequisite of survival and is intended as a contribution to our understanding of the Soviet Union.
I’m a professional explainer of Russia. For over 20 years I’ve been studying the country and trying to understand what makes it (and its leaders and people) so intent on attacking those around it and perceived adversaries further afield. That’s never been more important to understand than today when Ukraine and its soldiers are the only thing preventing Russia from once again rampaging across Europe. These books are ones that have helped me understand one part or several parts of the Russia problem, and I think they’ll be helpful for anybody else who wants to, too.
I found it hard to choose between several of Edward Crankshaw’s books explaining Russia. Each, in its own way, uncovers a particular aspect of history or society that makes the country what it is. In the end, I settled on this, his first: published in 1947, not long after Crankshaw had been posted to Moscow during WWII, and while he was still reeling from the vast gulf between what he experienced there and the image of the USSR that was being sold abroad.
Crankshaw was sometimes accused of being too sympathetic to Russia, but while he does his best to explain why the country behaves as it does, he doesn’t seek to excuse it. For that reason I find this one of the most clear-headed appraisals of Russia. And given the continuities that run through all of Russian history, his rationalising of how Russia works and what it does is…
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