Five Essays on War and Disease

Kirill Kobrin is a writer, historian, journalist, or, in his own words, "a European writer and historian writing in Russian." Among his heroes are Wenceslas Hollar, Franz Kafka, Antoine-Jean Gros, Napoleon Bonaparte, Thomas Mann, Edward Gibbon, the author himself, and all of us, unfortunately, found in this time and place.

The book by Kirill Kobrin explores war - as a state of individual and social consciousness. The author traces how war permeates everyday life and culture, starting from the Thirty Years' War to the present...