900 Days and The City of Thieves

Finished two books about the siege of Leningrad. Before I started reading about it I had no idea that there even was a siege, and didn't appreciate that Leningrad used to be called St. Petersburg (as it is now), or that the siege has no parallel in history, or what an epic idiot Stalin was, or how terrifically f'd up the Soviet government was. So much to learn! (Borrowed both books from Jeff. Well, I borrowed the second one. The other one I found on the floor in his garage and appropriated.)

The first book: The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad is great but it suffers from a huge cast of characters and an incredibly boring devotion to minutiae. And a tragic shortage of maps. Pictures would be nice, but if you don't have them, you don't have them. But no maps is shameful in a book of this type. The two(!!) maps that are included are poorly detailed, so it becomes difficult to follow along without backtracking. If you really want a feel from the miseries, top to bottom, this is the book to read. It took me almost a month to finish, which is a really long time. I had to take a break and finish a couple books along the way, just to lighten up a little.

For the casual reader, I recommend City of Thieves, which draws heavily on 900 Days. Indeed, the author uses dramatic events from 900 Days to create his fiction, so much of what he describes actually happened.

The individual miseries of the siege are available in either book, but the numbers are as follows: According to 900 Days, at least 1.1 MILLION people died of starvation or starvation-related causes in Leningrad from 1941-44, with another 300 or 400 thousand killed in the fighting. So, 1.5 million people in and around that one city. It's hard to get your head around. It's like San Francisco starving to death. Except San Francisco is only ~800,000 people. So add Boston (600,000), and you're juuuuust about there. I had a difficult time trying to process it.

Both books highly recommended.