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The Glass Wall: Lives on the Baltic Frontier

The Glass Wall: Lives on the Baltic Frontier

Current price: $31.50
Publication Date: February 8th, 2022
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN:
9780374163457
Pages:
320

Description

Max Egremont, author of Some Desperate Glory, tells stories from the "Glass Wall" between Europe and Asia.

Few countries have suffered more from the convulsions and bloodshed of twentieth-century Europe than those in the eastern Baltic region. Caught between the giants of Germany and Russia, on a route across which armies surged or retreated, small nations like Latvia and Estonia were for centuries the subjects of conquests and domination as foreign colonizers claimed control of the territory and its inhabitants, along with their religion, government, and culture.

The Glass Wall features an extraordinary cast of characters—contemporary and historical, foreign and indigenous—who have lived and fought in the Baltic, western Europe’s easternmost stronghold. Too often the destiny of this region has seemed to be to serve as the front line in other people’s wars. By telling the stories of warriors and victims, of philosophers and barons, of poets and artists, of rebels and emperors, and of others who lived through years of turmoil and violence, Max Egremont sets forth a brilliant account of a long-overlooked region, on a frontier whose limits may still be in doubt.

About the Author

Max Egremont was born in 1948 and studied modern history at Oxford University. He is the author of several novels and works of history and biography, including Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia, Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, and an acclaimed biography of Siegfried Sassoon.

Praise for The Glass Wall: Lives on the Baltic Frontier

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Times (UK)

"Egremont dives deep into the story of the Baltic frontier . . . [A] near-total immersion into a land, its people, and the harrowing arc of its history. An intricately layered account of the eastern Baltic, a land shaped by colonization, revolution, deportation, and murder." —Kirkus Reviews