Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams | 
pickI liked this a lot, but man was it heartbreaking to read this book with one eye on the news. The history of Odessa is fascinating, and the writer does a good job of bringing it and its most significant (male) inhabitants to life. Its resilience over the centuries makes me hopeful it will rebuild in the coming decades.
(Photo by Alexey Savchenko on Unsplash)
How Odessa got its name:
“According to a story that is as fitting as it is unverifiable, [Catherine the Great] made one lasting change. . . . Odessos, commanded the most powerful & self-consciously modern woman in Russian history, should be changed to 'Odessa'—the feminized version of a name forever associated with the ancient Odysseus, the wily warrior & navigator.“
