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blairewithane's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 stars. It is hard to rate a book this depressing and that truly lays bare the horrors of both Hitler and Stalin. The awful history that all Ukrainians and particularly Ukrainian Jews is endured is almost impossibly bad to wrap my mind around. I’ve read lots about the Holocaust but learning about Stalin’s intentional starvation of Ukrainians just a few years earlier really starkly shows what Eastern Europeans went through. He also illustrates the reasons these policies came to pass and the differences between the death camps and concentration camps and gives a clear picture of what happened throughout those years.
piratequeen's review against another edition
5.0
An absolutely stunning read. Stunning in good and bad ways; positively stunning in that the research and writing were superb, and the narrative absorbing, but negatively stunning, because Snyder pulls no punches in his description of the utter horror wrought by the Soviets and the Nazis in eastern Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. I was literally stunned as I made my way through this book; several times I set it down for a few moments so I could stare into the ether, trying to absorb what I'd read. I opened this expecting a general overview of the eastern front, which it was to a point; the focus, however, was on the massive death visited upon Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic, and Poland, through deliberate starvation, mass shootings, bombings, and gassing at extermination camps.
I thought I knew about the Holocaust. I thought I had a general understanding of the destruction. I was wrong. Places and events of which I had a surface-level knowledge were described in a detail I never could have imagined. The section about the death camp at Treblinka was so horrific, I had to set the book down and ask my brother for a hug.
This should be essential reading in every history class, especially in the US, and especially now. As we witness the resurgence of ethno-nationlism, anti-Semitism, and political oppression and violence, this book is a dark reminder of just how bad things can get when the monsters take over.
I thought I knew about the Holocaust. I thought I had a general understanding of the destruction. I was wrong. Places and events of which I had a surface-level knowledge were described in a detail I never could have imagined. The section about the death camp at Treblinka was so horrific, I had to set the book down and ask my brother for a hug.
This should be essential reading in every history class, especially in the US, and especially now. As we witness the resurgence of ethno-nationlism, anti-Semitism, and political oppression and violence, this book is a dark reminder of just how bad things can get when the monsters take over.
bookiemonster82's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
I long for fast paced, informative, and unbiased (mostly by veiwing past events based on todays understanding/politics) accounts of history. Its very difficult to get that. Most are over saturated by a given authors personal view based on their current day-isms. Blood Lands was very informative, (at times to the detriment of pace) and did an admirable job of setting the scene on both sides of the conflict as understood by the players. There were quite a few instances of Monday morning quaterbacking, but not enough to prevent me from enjoying the read.
desertjarhead505's review against another edition
5.0
A magnificent work, one I recommend strongly, and one I will never read again. I have to echo some of the words of the reviewers quoted on the cover: Harrowing. Shattering. Horror. I would add, both absorbing and heartbreaking. I kept remembering a quote from Bertrand Russell: “The mark of a civilized human being is the capacity to read a column of numbers and weep.”
Snyder moves back and forth between the analytical and the personal, and does something I've seldom seen. He both makes the bloodcurdling tragedy real at a humble personal level and shows the big picture.
The last section, the conclusion, is the best, I think. He subtitled it "Humanity." Snyder again goes over the numbers; he compares and contrasts the Nazi and Stalinist systems in action; he sorts the differential impacts by the categories the killers divided people into. Then he examines the ways that people distance themselves from death and suffering, whether they're the perpetrators or are looking at it from a distance as students of history, and calls that distancing out as a kind of second killing, an erasing of each of the dead as a person with his or her own life, personality, thoughts and feelings. He tears down that abstraction effectively by repeating that the 5.7 million Jews killed in the Holocaust were actually 5.7 million times one - each a unique person. The 3.1 million Soviet POWs murdered by the Nazis were 3.1 million times one. The 3.3 million Ukrainians starved to death on Stalin's orders were 3.3 million times one.
I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes after finishing reading this. I can only imagine how many time Timothy Snyder wept while he wrote it. This must have been a terribly hard book to create. I've watched interviews of Timothy Snyder and been struck by how somber his resting demeanor is - as he has made the study of this part of history his specialty, it's easy to see why.
Every person who simplistically dismisses whole categories of other people as homogenous masses and objectifies them should have to read this book and talk it over with others, because that kind of distancing and objectification is the first step necessary for the infliction of mass evil.
Snyder moves back and forth between the analytical and the personal, and does something I've seldom seen. He both makes the bloodcurdling tragedy real at a humble personal level and shows the big picture.
The last section, the conclusion, is the best, I think. He subtitled it "Humanity." Snyder again goes over the numbers; he compares and contrasts the Nazi and Stalinist systems in action; he sorts the differential impacts by the categories the killers divided people into. Then he examines the ways that people distance themselves from death and suffering, whether they're the perpetrators or are looking at it from a distance as students of history, and calls that distancing out as a kind of second killing, an erasing of each of the dead as a person with his or her own life, personality, thoughts and feelings. He tears down that abstraction effectively by repeating that the 5.7 million Jews killed in the Holocaust were actually 5.7 million times one - each a unique person. The 3.1 million Soviet POWs murdered by the Nazis were 3.1 million times one. The 3.3 million Ukrainians starved to death on Stalin's orders were 3.3 million times one.
I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes after finishing reading this. I can only imagine how many time Timothy Snyder wept while he wrote it. This must have been a terribly hard book to create. I've watched interviews of Timothy Snyder and been struck by how somber his resting demeanor is - as he has made the study of this part of history his specialty, it's easy to see why.
Every person who simplistically dismisses whole categories of other people as homogenous masses and objectifies them should have to read this book and talk it over with others, because that kind of distancing and objectification is the first step necessary for the infliction of mass evil.