As is usual with Applebaum, this book is impeccably researched, smart, well written, and accessible. She tells the horrific story of Stalin's purposeful starvation of the Ukrainian people, emphasizing the 1932-1933 famine years. The Ukrainians have always yearned for independence and their opposition to farm collectivization and to Russian exportation of Ukrainian grain while withholding it from the Ukrainian peasants who grew it during lean harvest years enraged Stalin. He brutally retaliated by ordering grain, livestock, and produce seizures from the fields and from Ukrainian homes. Millions of adults, children, and farm animals died of starvation. In the aftermath, Stalin and the Russian government desperately tried to cover up the Holodomor and destroyed census records that showed 8 million people were "missing."

Although the book gets bogged down a bit in the middle with, in my view, a few too many stories of the atrocities that occurred during the famine, including cannibalism and infanticide, it offers a real understanding of the clear and direct path from those times to what we are witnessing in Ukraine today. Fortunately, the same lies and attempts to cover up what is happening in Ukraine are harder to promulgate today because of social media and a world that is more globally connected. It is difficult to understand why generations of murderous dictators persist in the attempt to suppress such a brave, independence loving people.