The recipient of a Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award, David Dessler built a 30+ year career at the College of William & Mary, where he served as a leading professor in government studies. David Dessler is also an avid traveler who has visited Russia for personal and professional purposes.
Several popular and well-written books discuss Russian history and culture. One of these books is Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. This 1993 book by Orlando Figes begins in the early 1700s with Peter the Great’s establishment of St. Petersburg and continues through the Soviet period. Figes focuses on the many creative individuals who put their multifaceted ideas about Russia and Russianness into their art.
The 2017 book Bears in the Streets: Three Journeys Across a Changing Russia, is non-academic author Lisa Dickey’s lively travelogue about her three trips across Russia, made 10 years apart from 1995 to 2015. The format allowed her to get to know and photograph everyday people from all backgrounds and to explore the nuances of their lives set against the upheavals of their time.
Cambridge University Press’s A Concise History of Russia, written by Paul Bushkovitch and published in 2012, is well-suited to both students and general readers. The book provides a sweeping overview of the country and its culture from early medieval times to the present, concentrating in part on how the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 opened up new sources and avenues of scholarly understanding.
David Dessler 
