Author Anna Reid discusses new book 'Leningrad'

www.bloomsbury....
On 8 September 1941, eleven short weeks after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, his brutal surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Leningrad was surrounded. The siege would not be lifted for two and a half years and during the 872 days of blockade and bombardment as many as two million Soviet lives would be lost. Had the city fallen, the history of the Second World War -- and of the twentieth century -- would have been very different.
Leningrad is a gripping narrative history interwoven with personal stories -- immediate accounts of daily siege life drawn from diarists and memoirists on both sides. These twentieth-century European civilians living through unbearable hardship reveal the terrible details of life in the blockaded city: the all-consuming and daily search for food; crawling up ice-rounded steps on hands and knees, hauling a bucket of water; a woman who has just buried her father noticing how the cemetery guards have used a frozen corpse with outstretched arm and cigarette between its teeth as a signpost to a mass grave; another using a dried pea to make a rattle for her evacuated grandson's first birthday, and putting it away in a drawer when she hears, six months later, that he has died of meningitis.
In Leningrad, Anna Reid answers many of the previously unanswered questions about the siege. How good a job did Leningrad's leadership do -- would many lives have been saved if it had been better organised? How much was Stalin's and Moscow's wariness of western-leaning Leningrad (formerly the Tsars' capital, St Petersburg) a contributing factor? How close did Leningrad come to falling into German hands? And, above all, how did those who lived through it survive?

[@rickp3753]

This book made me grateful for everything I have. Brilliant.

[@3BK235Y]

I am reading the book, and loving it. One of the book's features that makes it different (and I particularly love that) is the great number of common people she quotes, and particularly enjoyable for me, as a Diary keeper, the number of Diaries entries and Memoirs she reproduces, sometimes quite extensively. That gives the book a unique flavour - and she mentions that on the video.

[@Blindsquit]

My mother experienced it as a child. Thank you Ann Reid for familirization of the Western audience with this tradegy.

[@mongolballempire8664]

Your mother is a strong woman

[@whereskim89]

I finished this book today and I say good job. It wasn't overly political because you can read about that anywhere, but more of a common person survival story.

[@nikolay6373]

Спасибо за Книгу! Очень Понравилась! 👏👏👏.

[@Jux925]

Just bought it. The reading should be more effective, when we have -20 degree winter currently.

[@anniewrenn6928]

Superb book. Beautifully written and a fascinating story.

[@HabitatAid]

Stunning book - unexpected and moving. Thank you.

[@lauradouglas116]

Nesecito ese libro en español

[@quekcj]

A very vivid account of what happened during the siege. It makes me wonder very much how I would behave if I were one of those caught in the siege. I'm not confident that I would be self-sacrificing.

[@kabardinka1]

I'm about 3/4ths of the say through Lenningrad and it's a powerful book filled with incredible, human level stories of the siege.

[@LiadMalone]

Just finished reading the Hebrew translation. Excellent work by Reid. No less than an extremely well written history book!