Leningrad

May 5, 2008
British military historian Jones (Stalingrad
) explores the physical and psychological depths of the 872-day siege of Leningrad during WWII—“one of the most horrific sieges in history”—in this sobering chronicle. Leningrad, a city of 2.5 million, was a major objective of Hitler because of its economic, military and symbolic significance (as the “birthplace of the Bolshevik Revolution”). Besieged and poorly served by the corrupt and incompetent city administration, Leningrad descended into starvation, “widespread looting and cannibalism” and deadly epidemics. Despite the appalling conditions, says Jones, “a remarkable humanity still survived,” and Leningrad miraculously managed to hold out until the Soviet Army liberated the city in January 1944. It's likely that more than one million civilians perished during the siege. Following in the footsteps of Harrison Salisbury's classic 1969 account, The 900 Days,
Jones draws extensively from the diaries of siege victims and interviews with survivors for a harrowing portrait of life reduced to a single pursuit: “the hunt for food.” Readers interested in military history, the Soviet Union or the psychology of survival will appreciate this unforgettable saga. 35 b&w illus., 5 maps.

June 1, 2008
In the annals of World War II, the German siege of Leningrad wasaghastly episode, consigning an uncertain number of victims--perhaps a million or more--to the grave. Jones chronicle of the siege supersedes thepreviously best-known account in English, Harrison Salisburys900 Days (1969), with sources unavailable to Salisbury, such as Leningraders diaries and drawings that contemporaneously recorded the citys ordeal. Reading selections included in Jones narrative, one sees why, from the Soviet regimes perspective, such embarrassingly truthful records were suppressed. Not only do they reflect depravities like cannibalism, they also evidence widespread anti-Soviet sentiment. Within the political-military vise in which the citys population was trapped, bombarded by the Nazis from without and vulnerable to arrest and execution by state security from within, diarists struggles to survive on declining rations receive Jones unblinking rendering of death by starvation. Completing the picture with defiant cultural events, such as the premier performance of the Seventh Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich, Jones realism conveys the horrors and the occasional hopes endured by the besieged of Leningrad.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)