To Catch a Tartar: Notes from the Caucasus Book

Former Associated Press journalist Chris Bird lived for many years in the midst of the Chechen conflict; in this engrossing account, he offers a first–hand insight into the history of a region still in turmoil today.

In To Catch a Tartar, Chris Bird traces a personal journey through the violent de–colonialization of the Soviet empire, recording a war in which lightly armed Chechen fighters held their own against tens of thousands of Russian troops, a conflict that in many essentials has not changed since Lermontov and Tolstoy fought the gortsy, the "mountaineers" of the Caucasus. Instructive and erudite, this is an absorbing history of a still–unknown corner of the world. Chris Bird is the former Caucasus correspondent for Agence France–Presse and The Associated Press.