"Moscow, 1937: the Soviet metropolis at the zenith of Stalin's dictatorship. A society utterly wrecked by a hurricane of violence. In this compelling book, the renowned historian Karl Schlögel reconstructs with meticulous care the process through which, month by month, the terrorism of a state-of-emergency regime spiraled into the 'Great Terror' during which 1.5 million human beings lost their lives within a single year. He revisits the sites of...

In Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "A Year of Thirteen Moons," the camera watches the prostitute Red Zora as she watches Fassbinder in a television interview. The actress is Ingrid Caven, the director's former wife and the woman with whom he claims to have his most important "elective affinity." At once provocative and revealing, the scene illustrates Fassbinder's interest in blurring the boundaries between art and life, between fiction and autobiography....