From the Bookshelf of Exceptional Books…

[close] Ken Follett is of the old school of informative novelists, combining a boisterous tale with an uplifting lesson in history and civic groups.
He takes us to England, Austria, Germany, to the Russian Revolution and the beginning and end of WWI. He understands that his average reader’s knowledge of both is probably rusty, to say the least; accordingly, he meticulously recreates an era and leads us through the follies and occasional heroics of its protagonists real and imaginary. This is one of my favorite books I've read, I highly recommend it.