Alan Philps News Today

This year’s best books, chosen by Monitor reviewers, pay close attention to history and its lessons for the present – and the future.

This year’s best books, chosen by Monitor reviewers, pay close attention to history and its lessons for the present – and the future.

Sitting in the lobby of Moscow's Metropol hotel at some moment in the mid-'90s, a client and I (I was working in finance at the time) gazed at those wandering by—hard-looking men involved in who-knows-what business, sleek women involved in we-knew-what business, some wealthy "new Russians" sporting haute couture and ostentatious disdain for Soviet drabness—all stock characters in Weimar Moscow. The two men deep in conversation at a neighboring table were under investigati...

PROFESSOR Dr Dirk Boll, deputy chairman of 20th and 21st century art at Christie’s in London, challenged traditional concepts of the international art mar...

From fiction to fact: winning reads for all kinds of dads.

Since it opened its doors in 1905, the Metropol Hotel in Moscow has witnessed seismic events in Russia’s 20th-century history. In its early years it was a glittering playground for wealthy merchants, louche cavalry officers, and ladies of leisure and luxury. When the Bolsheviks seized power, Tsarist officers beat a retreat to the hotel to fight a last losing battle against the revolutionaries. Afterward, Lenin requisitioned it, renamed it the Second House of Soviets, and sent from it the teleg...

Details of the disinformation war conducted by Joseph Stalin mirror the modern-day stifling of press freedom in times of war.

A new book shows how journalists failed to capture Russia’s horrors | Culture

Our critics' guide to the best reads to take away with you

No one was more surprised to learn his book had been endorsed by Sarah Jessica Parker than Alan Philps