Russia-USSR-US Histories: A Reading List

As the first university press in the South, UNC Press pioneered in tackling issues of the day through the honest, and sometimes gritty, lens of reality, in order to challenge the status quo in a historically diverse and complex region. Our association with the oldest public university in the nation inspires in us a commitment to bring new and established peer-reviewed research to academic and general audiences—notably recognized for our publishing on US and world history—a mission that informs all we do.

Learn about the histories of Russia, the USSR, and the United States through the following selection of UNC Press titles. Request them at your library, or order directly via uncpress.org and receive a 30% discount on print format books using promo code 01SOCIAL30.

Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia by Chris Miller
“Understanding the internal dynamics of contemporary Russia is more important than ever. <i>Putinomics</i> is a valuable contribution to that task.”—Financial Times

Armageddon Insurance: Civil Defense in the United States and Soviet Union, 1945–1991
by Edward M. Geist
“This is the first comprehensive history of any Cold War civil-defense system, and Geist has given us not one side but both. . . . A major contribution to the literature on the Cold War.”—Russian Review

Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy, 1920s-1950s by Benjamin L. Alpers
“Alpers has made visible an important aspect of American intellectual history in the twentieth century. . . . [He] convincingly delineates an exciting intellectual history that has Orson Welles and Charlie Chaplin converse with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Joseph Schumpeter.”—American Historical Review

A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev
by Vladislav M. Zubok
“Draw[s] on abundant new primary sources to refine our understanding of the Cold War, turning it from a melodrama into a nuanced tragedy. . . . Rich in new information and fresh interpretation. Zubok reveals the full extent of Stalin’s brutal post-World War II suppression of the Soviet People.”—Washington Post

The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR
by Chris Miller
“Miller’s work goes a great distance in bettering our knowledge and understanding of the politics behind the Soviet economic collapse.”—Reviews in History

America’s Secret War against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920
by David S. Foglesong
“Carefully researched, clearly written, and provocative, America’s Secret War against Bolshevism is a welcome addition to the literature dealing with Wilsonian foreign policy, the American intervention in Russia, and early relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in general.”—Slavic Review