Recommendations you can check.
American historian of Central and Eastern Europe and the Holocaust; author of Bloodlands and On Tyranny.
5 things
Homage to CataloniaBook George Orwell
The reason why I am so fond of Homage to Catalonia, and see it as an even more relevant precursor to dissent, is that in it you can see a man of the Left learning to make the distinction that breaks down the Left with a big L into lots of little lefts.
Five Books interview on books about dissent
2012-01-25·fivebooks.com ↗
The Captive MindBook Czeslaw Milosz
Milosz tried to explain – as the title suggests – how thinking people could accept communism from inside the communist system.
Five Books interview on books about dissent
2012-01-25·fivebooks.com ↗
The Church and the LeftBook Adam Michnik
In The Church and the Left Michnik argues for an untraditional alliance. He says that the left has to talk to the Polish Catholic Church, especially after the Vatican's internal reform [in 1965].
Five Books interview on books about dissent
2012-01-25·fivebooks.com ↗
The Book of Laughter and ForgettingBook Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera was of course not really a dissident, but this book gets across the heartfelt reality of Stalinist faith.
Five Books interview on books about dissent
2012-01-25·fivebooks.com ↗
The Power of the PowerlessBook Vaclav Havel
In the end I think Havel will be remembered as the outstanding East European dissident writer, and he will be remembered as such above all for this essay.
Five Books interview on books about dissent
2012-01-25·fivebooks.com ↗
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.