Immediately after watching Vance and Trump berate Zelenskyy, I bought Collisions. Before our Head of State and his hand-picked architects of America’s geopolitical downfall held their press conference with Ukraine’s President, I was quite ignorant as to the origins of Russia’s invasion. However, after the embarrassing White House meeting and their insistence on being offered benign regard, it seemed obvious that America’s representatives and their take on the war was the opposite of what actually occurred: this alone offered some insight into the war. Like hedging stock performance by inversing Jim Cramer’s picks—which by itself provides enough information to make an informed decision—inversing whatever narrative Rubio, Vance, and Trump decide to sink their teeth into will lead the nonconformist to the correct position, even if that position remains a little bit hazy. That was the place I found myself in: the picture that the Trump administration painted regarding Russia’s invasion was incorrect, but it was pixelated (purposely so) regarding the correctorigin of this modern-day act of imperialism. That is where Collisions stepped in and assisted in clearing up the remaining confusion.

The book jumps around quite a bit, and it wasn’t until the final quarter that Ukraine’s current incumbent enters the picture. Therefore, by tapping into my expertise concerning foreign affairs (read: satire), I thought that Kimmage took some extended liberty with connecting the dots that supposedly completed a wholistic picture of Putin’s invasion. Correct, insight behind the fall of the Soviet Union—combined with Putin’s love for said Union—is a major reason behind his imperialist act, but still a good chunk of the book covered other decades of modern Eastern European history that I found hard to piece together with the invasion of Ukraine. Nonetheless, history is an explanation of how we got here, so I would rather Kimmage cover too much ground than too little. And while I still have a lot to learn on the subject, I would recommend Collisions to anyone interested in learning the origins of this ongoing war, albeit with the expectation that a few chapters will take a detour through the weeds.