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Hinterlands: The New Cold War Brewing at the Peripheries of the West
A Pulitzer grantee’s timely work of reportage from the borderlands of Europe, Russia, and Turkey, where brewing conflicts mark a significant fault line in shifting geopolitics.
Hannah Lucinda Smith, a Pulitzer grantee and acclaimed foreign correspondent, has devoted well over a decade to intrepid, on-the-ground reporting where few dare the small, often disputed territories at the edges of Europe and Russia. There, Smith finds, the influence of Vladimir Putin and his favored strongmen—along with Turkish president and regional lynchpin Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—fan territorial disputes and destabilize already fragile democracies.
Hinterlands offers a rare glimpse into the ghost towns of Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh, the cryptocurrency farms of Transnistria, the brittle border communities of Bosnia and its Republika Srpska, and the enclaves of Northern Cyprus that Russian oligarchs call home. In rarely seen places in Crimea and the Caucasus, frontiers have shifted and new countries have been made. Informed by her encounters with politicians, combatants, and the ordinary people caught in the crosshairs, Smith paints a vivid portrait of the places where geopolitical alliances are forged and broken, where the violent ambitions of dictators are most keenly felt.
This indispensable account of events in the gray zones of Eurasia gives vital context to our rapidly changing world and sounds a clear-eyed, urgent We ignore the hinterlands at our own peril. What happens inside them has the power to redraw the fault lines of a new Cold War and shape the future of the West.
"Compelling and disquieting. Do the keys to the future lie in the hinterlands, where new frontiers are already being drawn?"—Jon Lee Anderson, author of A Revolutionary Life and To Lose a The Fall and Rise of the Taliban
Hannah Lucinda Smith, a Pulitzer grantee and acclaimed foreign correspondent, has devoted well over a decade to intrepid, on-the-ground reporting where few dare the small, often disputed territories at the edges of Europe and Russia. There, Smith finds, the influence of Vladimir Putin and his favored strongmen—along with Turkish president and regional lynchpin Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—fan territorial disputes and destabilize already fragile democracies.
Hinterlands offers a rare glimpse into the ghost towns of Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh, the cryptocurrency farms of Transnistria, the brittle border communities of Bosnia and its Republika Srpska, and the enclaves of Northern Cyprus that Russian oligarchs call home. In rarely seen places in Crimea and the Caucasus, frontiers have shifted and new countries have been made. Informed by her encounters with politicians, combatants, and the ordinary people caught in the crosshairs, Smith paints a vivid portrait of the places where geopolitical alliances are forged and broken, where the violent ambitions of dictators are most keenly felt.
This indispensable account of events in the gray zones of Eurasia gives vital context to our rapidly changing world and sounds a clear-eyed, urgent We ignore the hinterlands at our own peril. What happens inside them has the power to redraw the fault lines of a new Cold War and shape the future of the West.
"Compelling and disquieting. Do the keys to the future lie in the hinterlands, where new frontiers are already being drawn?"—Jon Lee Anderson, author of A Revolutionary Life and To Lose a The Fall and Rise of the Taliban
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Published July 21, 2026
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October 12, 2026
The Hinterlands is about countries and places in the Middle East that I know very little about. I knew some of the names: Syria, Bosnia, Cypress, Armenia, Kosovo, Moldova, Azerbaijan and others I had never heard of: Tranistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia. I will not be surprised to hear these names more in the future. The author is obviously very knowledgeable as she has spent 14 years living in and reporting about these areas for notable publications. There was a huge gain in my knowledge but the biggest one was the very real growing power of Putin (Russia) and Erdogan (Turkey) in these areas and the growth of autocracy. I had never realized the strategic importance of Turkey. The more I read the more I could see our country heading right into this autocratic web; even the current news possibility of buying gas from Russia ties right in. I also learned more about cryptocurrency and the more that I think about tis, I am pretty well convinced that this is a powerful form of international money laundering. There are many warnings in this book that should be heeded. It is not light reading but it is not really difficult either and will give the reader vital information for assessing today’s current events.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review