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Imagine you could eavesdrop on a dinner party with three of the most fascinating historical figures of all time. In this landmark book, a gifted Harvard historian puts you in the room with Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt as they meet at a climactic turning point in the war to hash out the terms of the peace.
The ink wasn't dry when the recriminations began. The conservatives who hated Roosevelt's New Deal accused him of selling out. Was he too sick? Did he give too much in exchange for Stalin's promise to join the war against Japan? Could he have done better in Eastern Europe? Both Left and Right would blame Yalta for beginning the Cold War.
Plokhy's conclusions, based on unprecedented archival research, are surprising. He goes against conventional wisdom - cemented during the Cold War - and argues that an ailing Roosevelt did better than we think. Much has been made of FDR's handling of the Depression; here we see him as wartime chief. Yalta is authoritative, original, vividly written narrative history, and is sure to appeal to fans of Margaret MacMillan's bestseller Paris 1919.
"Starred Review. Harvard historian Plokhy (Unmaking Imperial Russia) enhances his stature as a scholar of modern Russia in this convincing revisionist analysis of the February 1945 Yalta conference." - Publishers Weekly
"An astute reappraisal of the Yalta Conference...fresh research drives this scholarly study of the complex blend of Yalta's personalities and ideas." - Kirkus Reviews
"Readers interested in World War II and diplomatic history ... are likely to find this detailed and revisionist account worth reading." - Library Journal
"In this insightful new book, S.M. Plokhy takes on perhaps the most controversial and least understood summit of modern times, clarifying, with new documents from the Soviet side, what is myth and what is reality. The Big Three come to life in Plokhy's telling, and the analysis is sober and strong." - Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston
"S.M. Plokhy's Yalta provides an important and timely corrective to the myths that have lasted far too long. His detailed and balanced account should do much to correct the misunderstandings and distortions." - Antony Beevor, prize-winning author of Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin
This information about Yalta was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
S.M. Plokhy is a professor of history at Harvard University and the author of several award-winning works on modern Russian and Ukrainian history, including Unmaking Imperial Russia and The Origins of the Slavic Nations.
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