This was not an easy book for me to read. Rappaport's many sources trace in particular and sometimes horrific detail the hunger, the cold, the loss of civic order in Petrograd in 1917, and ultimately, the random and intentional violence on a city-wide scale as the Russian revolution gathers momentum. So quickly did stability crumble. So incredulous were the country's leaders about the underlying tensions growing out of decades of autocratic rule and the costs of staying in the First World War. And, of course, I wondered whether such unrest could happen here. I appreciated Rappaport following her sources lives after their assignments to Russia, sometimes into oblivion. She effectively expressed, for me her, compassion for them.