In Memoriam Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1918-2008

It would have been hard to miss today's coverage of the death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet dissident who opened a door on the world of the Soviet Communist regime with his groundbreaking Gulag Archipelago. While many of us read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in school, if you, or your book group, are curious about the Gulag, a great place to start is with Solzhenitsyn's own authorized abridgement, which also includes an introduction by Anne Applebaum, who wrote about how the Gulag changed the world on Slate today. For those who want the whole story, the Gulag is available in three unabridged editions as well.