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History of Ukraine

Learn more about the country, its people, and culture with these books and DVDs

Lonely Planet Ukraine by Marc Di Duca

You might be expecting to find elegant cities, spectacular peaks and ancient cave cities in Ukraine, but were you expecting rampaging nightlife in Odesa and bathers parading around in 18th-century and punk costumes on the Yalta coast?

Ukraine by Deborah Kent

I'll never change my name : an immigrant's American dream from Ukraine to the U.S.A. to Dancing with the stars by Valentin Chmerkovskiy

The ballroom dancer famed for his appearances on "Dancing with the Stars" relates the failures and successes that have shaped his life, from his early childhood in Ukraine, to growing up as an immigrant in the U.S., to his rise to international fame

Red famine : Stalin's war on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum

"From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag and the National Book Award finalist Iron Curtain, a revelatory history of one of Stalin's greatest crimes--the consequences of which still resonate today In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization--in effect a second Russian revolution--which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum argues that more than three million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because the state deliberately set out to kill them. Applebaum proves what has long been suspected: after a series of rebellions unsettled the province, Stalin set out to destroy the Ukrainian peasantry. The state sealed the republic's borders and seized all available food. Starvation set in rapidly, and people ate anything: grass, tree bark, dogs, corpses. In some cases, they killed one another for food. Devastating and definitive, Red Famine capturesthe horror of ordinary people struggling to survive extraordinary evil. Today, Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, has placed Ukrainian independence in its sights once more. Applebaum's compulsively readable narrative recalls one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century, and shows how it may foreshadow a new threat to the political order in the twenty-first."--Provided by publisher.

In wartime : stories from Ukraine by Tim Judah

From one of the finest journalists of our time comes a definitive, boots-on-the-ground dispatch from the front lines of the conflict in Ukraine

Black square : adventures in post-Soviet Ukraine by Sophie Pinkham

This captivating and original narrative blends politics, history, and reportage in a street-level account of a vexing and troubled region. In the tradition of Elif Batuman and Ian Frazier, Black Square presents an evocative, multidimensional portrait ofUkrainian life under the shadow of Putin.

Judgment before Nuremberg : the Holocaust in the Ukraine and the first Nazi war crimes trial by Greg Dawson

Documents the little-known story of the Kharkov Trials that sought justice for thousands of Jews killed in the Ukraine two years before the Nuremberg Trials, tracing the author's visit to the peaceful city where his grandparents and great-grandparents were killed.

In the midst of civilized Europe : the pogroms of 1918-1921 and the onset of the Holocaust by Jeffrey Veidlinger

"From an award-winning historian, the first full depiction of the wave of anti-Jewish pogroms that followed the Russian Revolution and how they laid the groundwork for the Holocaust. Includes illustrations and maps"--

Ghosts of Chernobyl

When a group of unsuspecting American tourists stumbles across the Chernobyl exclusion zone whilst on their travels across Eastern Europe, their intrigue quickly turns to cold fear. Evil awaits in the form of ghosts of the hundreds of citizens who died trying to flee the aftermath of the explosion. It looks like the group has no hope when they meet a mysterious barely-living girl, but will she help them escape alive?

Chernobyl : a 5-part miniseries

In April 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics becomes one of the world's worst man-made catastrophes. This gripping 5-part HBO miniseries tells the powerful and visceral story of this event and its aftermath

The babushkas of Chernobyl

Take a journey into the regulated Chernobyl Exclusion Zone several decades after the world's worst nuclear disaster in April 1986

No place on Earth : an incredible true story of strength and survival

In October 1942, Esther Stermer, the matriarch of a Jewish family in the Ukraine, leads her family underground to hide from the pursuing Nazis and stays nearly a year and a half. Their harrowing story of survival living in near total darkness in two cold, damp caves is one like no other ever told

Midnight in Chernobyl : the untold story of the world's greatest nuclear disaster by Adam Higginbotham

The Gates of Europe : A History of Ukraine

Ukraine is currently embroiled in a tense battle with Russia to preserve its economic and political independence. But today's conflict is only the latest in a long history of battles over Ukraine's existence as a sovereign nation. As award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues in The Gates of Europe, we must examine Ukraine's past in order to understand its fraught present and likely future. Situated between Europe, Russia, and the Asian East, Ukraine was shaped by the empires that have used it as a strategic gateway between East and West-from the Romans and Ottomans to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, all have engaged in global fights for supremacy on Ukrainian soil. Each invading army left a lasting mark on the landscape and on the population, making modern Ukraine an amalgam of competing cultures.Authoritative and vividly written, The Gates of Europe will be the definitive history of Ukraine for years to come

Anatomy of a genocide : the life and death of a town called Buczacz by Omer Bartov

"A fascinating and timely examination of how genocide can take root at the local level--turning neighbors, friends and even family members against one another--as seen through the little-known story of the Eastern European border town Buczacz during World War II"--

Odessa : genius and death in a city of dreams by Charles King

Describes the vibrant Black Sea port city of Odessa and the thriving Jewish population that included Alexander Pushkin, Isaac Babel, and Zionist activist Vladimir Jabotinsky, and examines the mass murders of the Romanian occupation during World War II

Voices from Chernobyl : the oral history of a nuclear disaster by Svetlana Aleksievich

The mitten : a Ukrainian folktale by Jan Brett

Several animals sleep snugly in Nicki's lost mitten until the bear sneezes

Recipient of the National Medal, the nation's highest honor for libraries.