Benjamin Nathans is the author of Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia, which was awarded the Koret Jewish Book Award, the Vucinich Book Prize, and the Lincoln Book Prize, and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in History. A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement, Nathans is the Alan Charles Kors Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.

"A magisterial account."---Polly Jones, Journal of Modern History --- "Monumental. . . . A remarkable history of protest in Russia." --- "Clear, scholarly and careful, averse to jargon, shrewd about testimony, subtle in his presentation of the various figures; he has interviewed many of the dissidents himself."---Robert Blaisdell, Russian Life --- "[A] rigorous, probing, and highly engaging study." --- "Comprehensive and analytical, Benjamin Nathans’s To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause vivifies the Soviet intellectuals at the complex heart of the human-rights-oriented dissidence movement in the USSR. . . . A meticulous history of a principled movement, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause addresses efforts to protect human rights within the context of the Soviet Union." --- "An expertly conveyed history of the Soviet dissident movement and the individuals involved. For readers interested in the history of censorship, human rights, international law, or the Soviet Union. It’s one not to miss." --- "Authoritative. . . . An essential addition to the cultural history of the late Soviet era." --- "An outstanding work of synthesis and interpretation, based on a comprehensive knowledge of the sources, [To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause] will be the definitive work on the subject for a long time to come. . . . [The] book is peppered with fascinating and sometimes touching vignettes about leading figures in the dissident movement. . . . An absorbing case study in how a creative minority can challenge the thinking of an authoritarian state."---Philip Boobbyer, Slavonic and East European Review --- "Drawing on extensive new material, including unpublished diaries, private letters, and KGB interrogation transcripts, this insightful history of Soviet dissidents introduces remarkable individuals who courageously and selflessly tried to pursue civil rights from the 1960s through the 1980s."---Maria Lipman, Foreign Affairs --- "To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause offers refreshingly clear-eyed insights into the idiosyncratic world of those who fought for freedom behind the Iron Curtain. . . . [It] empathetically traces the stories of those who broke the rules by sticking to the law. . . . A host of original insights, shedding light on a remarkable cast of individuals who never succumbed to political apathy at a time when most did."---Katja Hoyer, The Telegraph --- "[A] magisterial new history. . . . The great strength of Nathans’s account is to put the dissidents back in their own time and place."---Stephen Lovell, Times Literary Supplement --- "To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause sheds light on how this seemingly marginal protest movement, largely rejected by much of the society from which it sprang, nonetheless reinvented itself at key junctures and eventually to great effect. It also sheds light on the risk-takers themselves: an extraordinary cast of characters. . . . [A] magnum opus."---Michael David-Fox, The Nation --- "A book about a past time that is very much a book for our time. . . . The story of the Soviet dissidents is a story from which we all stand to learn as we face a new wave of authoritarianism."---Jeffrey C. Isaac, Los Angeles Review of Books --- "It is widely held that the beginning of the end of Soviet totalitarianism arrived in the 1980s. . . . But as the historian Benjamin Nathans makes plain in To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause, an exhaustive chronicle of the Soviet dissident movement (based on more than two decades of research into a mountain of K.G.B. case files, unpublished diaries and private correspondence), the fire that would ultimately incinerate the U.S.S.R. was lit much earlier, in the ’50s."---David Kortava, New York Times --- "In a society that had been stultified for decades by fear, [Soviet dissidents] somehow found the strength not to be afraid. To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause gives them their considerable due. . . . An ambitious, elegant, and readable book about intrepid people and their persecutors. . . . Engaging and entertaining."---Robert G. Kaiser, New York Review of Books --- "[A] thoughtful, superbly researched and gracefully written study of the Russian dissident movement. . . . When we Americans are ready for our own glasnost, Mr. Nathans's riveting history of those who returned to authenticity may inspire us to do the same."---Gary Saul Morson, Wall Street Journal --- "A Five Books Best Book of the Year" --- "Winner of the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies" --- "Winner of the Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies" --- "A Stevereads History Book of the Year" --- "Finalist for the Literary Award, Athenaeum of Philadelphia" --- "Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize, McGill University" --- "Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize, Lionel Gelber Foundation" --- "Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize" --- "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction"