In "Lenin's Train: The Journey to Revolution," the renowned British historian Catherine Merridale vividly recounts the story of the most famous train journey in world history, which culminated in the fall of the Tsarist Empire and the rise of the Soviet Union. As World War I threatened to drag on indefinitely in 1917, the German government decided to smuggle the revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin into Russia, unaware that Lenin's journey in a sealed carriage would lead to the world-shaking October Revolution. She thrillingly depicts a world we usually only know from spy novels: agents in luxury hotels, diplomats on smooth floors, debating exiled revolutionaries in smoky cafés—while outside, the streets of St. Petersburg are filled with striking factory workers. It is they who ultimately greet Lenin with cheers in a sea of red flags in St. Petersburg.