Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Timothy Snyder's study of the lands between Hitler and Stalin, where over 14 million people were killed by Soviet and Nazi regimes between 1933 and 1945. Snyder retells the history of the Holocaust and the Soviet terror through the lens of a single geographic region.

For founders, Bloodlands is a reminder of the scale of human catastrophe and the cost of ideology taken to its extreme. It is included because Peter Thiel recommended it as a book on the tragic history of the twentieth century.