About the new book list

11/18/2009

The RSS feeds for the new books list is updated every Wednesday and contains a list of books added to the Ellis Library collection for the last six weeks. The titles are grouped by call number classification, and are listed by week and alphabetically by title.

Books for the most recent weeks are currently on the New Books Shelves inside the north entrance of Ellis Library. They can be checked out.

880-02 Moskovskie voevody XVI-XVII vv. / Vadim Kargalov. (11/11/2009)

11/11/2009

Call #: DK50.8 .K37 2006

Rebellious satellite : Poland, 1956 / Paweł Machcewicz translated by Maya Latynski. (10/28/2009)

10/28/2009

View title at
Amazon.com

Review

"Rebellious Satellite makes a real case for 1956 as the first 'People's Revolution' and it is critical for understanding subsequent communist and post-communist history." —Jane Leftwich Curry, Santa Clara University

"Machcewicz has broken away from the method of analysis dominant in the historiography of 1956, which basically limited itself to descriptions of the decisions made by the Warsaw political center combined with information about the ferment within the opinion-forming milieux of the intelligentsia." —Dariusz Jarosz, Warsaw University

Call #: DK4439 .M33 2009

Putin and the rise of Russia / Michael Stuermer. (10/21/2009)

10/21/2009

View title at
Amazon.com

Review

As a scholar, author, and journalist of long standing, Stuermer has ranged widely. The broader perspective, historical and geographical, that he brings to this period of Russian history is refreshing. (The Independent [London])

Equally at home in English or his native German, Michael Stuermer is one of the West’s most respected authorities on Russia and Germany. Few can be as qualified to write about contemporary Russia and analyze the extraordinary phenomenon of Putin. The resulting book is authoritative, readable, and concise. (The Spectator)

Call #: DK510.766.P87 S78 2009

Meeting the demands of reason : the life and thought of Andrei Sakharov / Jay Bergman. (10/7/2009)

10/7/2009

View title at
Amazon.com

Product Description
The Soviet physicist, dissident, and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. The first Russian to have been so recognized, Sakharov in his Nobel lecture held that humanity had a "sacred endeavor" to create a life worthy of its potential, that "we must make good the demands of reason," by confronting the dangers threatening the world, both then and now: nuclear annihilation, famine, pollution, and the denial of human rights. Meeting the Demands of Reason provides a comprehensive account of Sakharov's life and intellectual development, focusing on his political thought and the effect his ideas had on Soviet society.

Jay Bergman places Sakharov's dissidence squarely within the ethical legacy of the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia, inculcated by his father and other family members from an early age. In 1948, one year after receiving his doctoral candidate's degree in physics, Sakharov began work on the Soviet hydrogen bomb and later received both the Stalin and the Lenin prizes for his efforts. Although as a nuclear physicist he had firsthand experience of honors and privileges inaccessible to ordinary citizens, Sakharov became critical of certain policies of the Soviet government in the late 1950s. He never renounced his work on nuclear weaponry, but eventually grew concerned about the environmental consequences of testing and feared unrestrained nuclear proliferation. Bergman shows that these issues led Sakharov to see the connection between his work in science and his responsibilities to the political life of his country.

In the late 1960s, Sakharov began to condemn the Soviet system as a whole in the name of universal human rights. By the 1970s, he had become, with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the most recognized Soviet dissident in the West, which afforded him a measure of protection from the authorities. In 1980, however, he was exiled to the closed city of Gorky for protesting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In 1986, the new Gorbachev regime allowed him to return to Moscow, where he played a central role as both supporter and critic in the years of perestroika. Two years after Sakharov's death, the Soviet Union collapsed, and in the courageous example of his unyielding commitment to human rights, skillfully recounted by Bergman, Sakharov remains an enduring inspiration for all those who would tell truth to power.

From the Back Cover
"Meeting the Demands of Reason is a serious, thoroughly researched account of one of Russia's intellectual giants, whose extraordinary courage and wisdom were matched by his modesty."--Richard Pipes, Professor of History, Emeritus, Harvard University

"In Meeting the Demands of Reason, Jay Bergman treats Andrei Sakharov not just as a scientist and activist, but as a complex subject whose scientific and political thinking were interrelated. Bergman is a fine writer and has an amazing grasp of Sakharov's scientific, philosophical, and political work. His well-researched biography reminds us that Sakharov was an extraordinary physicist, a thought-provoking political essayist, a devoted defender of human rights, and a concerned citizen of a troubled nation."--Kathleen E. Smith, author of Remembering Stalin's Victims and Mythmaking in the New Russia

"In this superb intellectual history, Jay Bergman illuminates the rise of the public citizen in the USSR, from Stalin to Gorbachev, explaining how physicist Andrei Sakharov moved from unquestioningly developing nuclear weapons for the Soviet state to raising questions about universal human rights and even the legitimacy of the USSR. Sakharov, by a combination of introspection, reason, and force of personality, determined to fight the arbitrary and capricious regime. These traits allowed Sakharov to survive when the Party leadership labeled him a traitor and spy in several public campaigns and eventually exiled him to Gorky, and to engage Mikhail Gorbachev--and Soviet society --in debates about perestroika. Bergman explores the evolution of Sakharov's views of arms control, nuclear power, dissidence, and human rights through a careful reading of Sakharov's extensive opus. Meeting the Demands of Reason is an important contribution to Soviet social, political, and cultural history--and to the history of science in its analysis of scientists' claims to have privilege about some kind of universal truth."--Paul R. Josephson, Colby College

About the Author
Jay Bergman is Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University. He is the author of Vera Zasulich: A Biography.

Call #: DK275.S25 B47 2009

MU Libraries New Books: History - Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics - Poland

About the new book list

880-02 Moskovskie voevody XVI-XVII vv. / Vadim Kargalov. (11/11/2009)

Rebellious satellite : Poland, 1956 / Paweł Machcewicz translated by Maya Latynski. (10/28/2009)

Review

Putin and the rise of Russia / Michael Stuermer. (10/21/2009)

Review

Meeting the demands of reason : the life and thought of Andrei Sakharov / Jay Bergman. (10/7/2009)