Molotov's Magic Lantern: Travels in Russian History (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Rachel Polonsky

When British writer Rachel Polonsky moved to a luxurious Moscow condo, she gained access to the apartment once occupied by Vyacheslav Molotov, a confidant of Stalin who signed off on the murder of millions of people. What surprised her was the discovery of Molotov's library, a bibliophile's delight with everything from Edgar Allan Poe to Andrei Rublev and fine editions of Russian authors banned by Molotov's own regime. While Molotov is her starting point, Polonsky wanders far from his study, luxuriating for many pages in Russia's famed bathhouses, enjoying the pleasures of a country dacha and venturing to Siberia, where she compares the relative comfort of the Tsar's political prisoners with the deadly labor camps of Stalin. Molotov's Magic Lantern is a marvelously knowing and digressive account of a civilization “with one elbow leaning on China and the other on Germany,” as Polonsky discovered while reading a 19th-century Russian author.