The Books canon

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Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
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2 volumes
SortEditorial Year Title
Subject·End of the Cold War✕clear
Nonfiction · Oral history

Secondhand Time

The Last of the Soviets
Svetlana Alexievich
2013 · 496 pages

Kitchen by kitchen, Alexievich recorded Soviet citizens describing what the collapse did to them. They talk about lost savings and lost faith, and a bewildering grief for the country that jailed their parents.

★ 5.5
Nonfiction

The Clash of Civilizations

Samuel Huntington
1996 · 367 pages

Ideology no longer divides the world, Huntington argued: culture does, along fault lines between seven or eight civilizations. After 9/11 nobody could discuss the West and Islam without answering him.

★ 4.8