This nonfiction book is a well-organized overview of the history of Russia. It is ideal for the nonhistorian and intended for a mainstream audience. The illustrations are excellent. Each chapter is concise and written in an engaging manner. Sidebars feature information about key figures and events. People who are interested in specific topic can easily find what they want in this book. It is not overly long, so it can be read in its entirety without a huge time commitment. It is also completely up to date and includes the current situation with Ukraine.
I would recommend this to anyone who wants to know more about Russia. It would be great for high school students.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

An interesting book capturing Russian history over a large period of time - from the Vikings and Mongols to current times

The History of Russia; From the Rus' people to President Putin by Michael Kerrigan. My mother was from Hungary so I as soon as I saw this book on Netgalley, I had to apply to read it. This was a pretty interesting history that goes far back and is rich with a lot of knowledge. Due to what is going on With Russia declaring war on Ukraine and putting so many people in danger, this is a very important history of Mother Russia and how much she takes; even of her own children.

Covering everything from the Mongols to Molotov, Ivan the Terrible to Catherine the Great, the Crimean War to the KGB, Kulaks, cossacks, Tsars, purges and the KGB, this is a splendid illustrated volume detailing the history of this vast, wonderful nation.

This was a very interesting account of the history of Russia . It is helpful to understand the Russia we are seeing in this day and age . It gave me lots of information about a country I knew almost nothing about . It is definitely worth reading and I will be recommending it to my audience , 5 stars from me .

If this book was written for a "Middle School" audience it would be barely competent. But as a book for adults it leaves way to much out to be anything but a "comic book" level. If you never heard of Russia, because you spent your life in a cave, this would be useful for you. It's not that most of the facts are correct, part of it is how they are presented and what has been left out.

So I don't recommend this book for anyone.

I've read quite a few books on RUssian history, and this is an excellent addition to that body of ltierature. Kerrigan gives you an account of the sweep of history of the land, to give you a sense of the people, and the stories they tell themselves. Ranging right from the settlement of Kievan Rus to the present day, Kerrigan's aim is to correct the view fostered in the West of a barbaric, barely-civilised people used to suffering. Sprinkled throughout with literary references, to give you a deeper context of the instances the writers were writing from, Kerrigan also has sections that illustrate a broader point-for instance, his section on how Romanovs appealed for sanctuary , across Europe to muyltiple monarchies and were turned down by all of them , since they were scared of fostering similar revolutions in their countries, serves to show that while the Russians were being condemned for their chaos, the European powers weren't showing their humanity either! In the times of the Viking invasions and settlements in what was then Kievan Rus, Kerrigan shows that the dominant thinking was that the Slavs, as a race, were considered inferior and "Asiatic", and deserving of subhuman treatment ( reading this enhanced my viewing experience of The Northman!) This was a way of thought that apparently continued through the ages, in subtle ways, with it finding violent expression in Nazi policy centuries later, towards the Russians, where the soldiers were indoctrinated with these ideas of belonging to a superior race and told to mete out the worst possible treatment towards the Russian villages on their warpath-mass slaughters, millions of RUssian women gangraped and forced to work in brothels for Nazi soldiers-and this was, for all practical purposes, Army policy and not the actions of a few violent soldiers-Nazi soldiers documented and photographed these acts as part of their bureaucratic process, an act that would return to haunt them, when these fell into the hands of the Russians who enacted bloody reprisals during their advance. Kerrigan shows that these attitudes of racial superiority resulted in would-be conquerors underestimating their opponents, alternatively it also ended up with Western historians attributing Russian successes to a purported "Russian character", that was used to suffering, thereby dehumanising and devaluing actual human courage.
An interesting aspect he brought out was that a lot of conflicts and splinter groups have their origins in the land's ancient history, as the Russian Empire expanded, with no real regard to local diversity, the conflicts in Chechnya and the Dagestani Republic have their roots in centuries old suppression of these lands. The land has seen turbulent changes with nearly every Tsar till the ROmanovs established a dynasty, leading to conspiracy theories all the time, either that the previous Tsar had been murdered, or ones who had died of natural causes were miraculously alive- Ivan the Terrible's son Dmitri (leading to the downfall of Boris GOdunov), EMpress Catherine's husband Peter, throughout the years-no wonder conspiracy theories about Anastasia surviving continued well in the 21st Century!
Every time anyone with a reformist agenda tried to liberalise, there were parts of the country that tried to break away, leading to the reformers being replaced by leaders who were far more hardline, and implemented oppressive measures to control a fractious, diverse Empire. This is a pattern that seems to have repeated down the centuries, including the 20th Century, with the Mensheviks replaced by the Bolsheviks, Khruschev replaced by Brezhnev, GOrbachev's ouster followed by Putin. Kerrigan shows how Putin masterfully uses Russia's history to weave a story of constant denigration by the West, despite Russia's primacy in 2 World Wars, to justify his actions, and maintain support. It's a fascinating book, and recommended to anyone who's interested in history

Highly pictorial – as always with these publishers – this is slightly revised from when first published (as "Dark History of Russia" in 2018). If you don't know why things have been updated a little, give your head a wobble. If you did still need to know all the rest – from the times when Russia, Ukraine and so on were getting to resemble something like the current countries with a mix of Slavic, Rus and Viking, through the ins and outs of all the Czars, to the machinations of Stalin and his successors, this is a pretty good beginner. It did feel a little too jumpy at times, skipping from one figure to another and from one detail to another. But it's pretty much readable, never spends too long on any one subject, and seems to me at least to be a good browse for the curious visitor who never expected to find a book on this one theme on their shelves. I normally see these books way past the excision of all their typos, and there were some printers' errors here, alongside the egregious article in the name of Ukraine. If ironed out before publication, this is perhaps a strong four stars, but it's probably that many even with the hiccups.