Published in 2010, Bloodlands argues that accounts of World War II have paid too much attention to the atrocities of Adolf Hitler, and not enough to Joseph Stalin's. Snyder believes a definitive history of the period must depict the suffering of all of the conflict's victims.

A flagbearer for the increasingly fashionable genre of "transnational history," Snyder's Bloodlands is a stunning example of the critical thinking skill of evaluation. Snyder cites evidence in 10 languages, putting fresh twists on the familiar story of World War II Nazi-Soviet fighting on the Eastern Front.