ABOUT

This is a site about the books and other writing by James Rodgers, author of Assignment Moscow: Reporting on Russia From Lenin to Putin (new edition 2023; first published July 2020); Headlines from the Holy Land (2015 and 2017); No Road Home: Fighting for Land and Faith in Gaza (2013); Reporting Conflict (2012). My work looks at how stories of international affairs, especially armed conflict, are told to the world.

BIOGRAPHY

I am an author and journalist. During two decades of covering international news, I reported on the end of the Soviet Union; the wars in Chechnya; the coming to power of Vladimir Putin; 9/11; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the 2003 war in Iraq; Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008. I completed correspondent postings for the BBC in Moscow, Brussels, and Gaza. I now teach in the Journalism Department at City St George’s, University of London.

The author in Berlin, February 2023. Photo © Kevin Cummins

New Book: ‘The Return of Russia’ out January 2026

Posted On June 28, 2025

MY NEXT BOOK, The Return of Russia: from Yeltsin to Putin, the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin, will be published by Yale University Press in January 2026. It is the result of four years’ work in the sense that I first proposed the idea in January 2022, the month before Russia’s attempted full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In another sense, it is a book that has evolved over decades: from when I first visited Leningrad as a student, in 1987, and Moscow and Kiev (as we then datelined Kyiv) as a young tv producer in 1991.

Drawing on extensive interviews with ambassadors and policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic, the book is a concise political history of Russia and its relations with the West since 1991–looking at how that relationship went from hope, through humiliation, to something close to hatred.

There will be a number of events to promote and discuss the book early next year. Details will be posted on here. In the meantime, there is more about the book here The Return of Russia – Yale University Press London, or here The Return of Russia (U.S. edition).

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