Biographer and historian Max Egremont, author of Some Desperate Glory, tells stories from the "Glass Wall" between Europe and Asia in this riveting historical account.
Few countries have suffered more from the convulsions and bloodshed of twentieth-century Europe than those in the eastern Baltic region. Caught between the giants of Germany and Russia, on a route across which armies surged or retreated, small nations like Latvia and Estonia were for centuries the subjects of conquests and domination as foreign colonizers claimed control of the territory and its inhabitants, along with their religion, government, and culture.
The Glass Wall features an extraordinary cast of characters-contemporary and historical, foreign and indigenous-who have lived and fought in the Baltic, western Europe's easternmost stronghold. Too often the destiny of this region has seemed to be to serve as the front line in other people's wars. By telling the stories of warriors and victims, of philosophers and barons, of poets and artists, of rebels and emperors, and of others who lived through years of turmoil and violence, Max Egremont sets forth a brilliant account of a long-overlooked region, on a frontier whose limits may still be in doubt.

List of Illustrations
Map
A Baltic Gazetteer
A Selective Baltic Chronology
1. Our Shared Riga
2. Pearl of the East
3. Museum of Power
4. Faith on the Frontier
5. Archives of the People
6. The City on a Hill
7. Glamour & Misery
8. The Baltic Versailles
9. Visitors
10. Imperial Echo
11. I take no sides
12. Different Gods
13. Civilization
14. I fight for the Tsar
15. The New Crusaders
16. Scattered Leaves
17. The Coup
18. North and South
19. Last Witnesses
20. You cannot choose your Liberator
21. Homecoming
22. My Sweet Lestene
23. Grandchildren
24. Borders of History
25. Forbidden Zone
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index

Max Egremont was born in 1948 and studied modern history at Oxford University. He is the author of several novels and works of history and biography, including Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia, Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, and an acclaimed biography of Siegfried Sassoon.