Anne Applebaum’s Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 (Doubleday, $35) describes the origins of the Soviet Bloc, a now defunct geopolitical entity consisting of European states that fell under the control of the USSR after World War II. Focusing specifically on Hungary, Poland, and East Germany, Applebaum investigates wartime and post-war factors that made the establishment of the Soviet regime possible. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time. This fantastic study of a “totalitarian mindset, Soviet priorities and Soviet thinking” should be required reading for any Soviet- or 20th-centuryhistory buff.