100 Days to Understand the History of Russia.

From the Slavs of the forests to Russia at war, one hundred short entries on the country that has fascinated and unsettled the West for a thousand years. How princes built a state, tsars an empire, revolutionaries a superpower — and what was left after the Soviet Union collapsed.

The book follows the whole arc: Kievan Rus', the Mongol yoke, Peter and Catherine, the conquest of the Caucasus and the Great Game, 1917, Stalin, the Cold War, 1991, and the decades that led to the present.

Each entry stands on its own and takes a few minutes, so an immense and intimidating history can be read in pieces.