What I'm looking for is a revolution-sympathetic history (as opposed to the "inevitable descent into authoritarianism/tragic lost liberal opportunities school") that doesn't veer all the way over into revolutionary hagiography.
On the basis of this book review - https://networks.h-net.org/node/10000/reviews/10105/pretty-figes-peoples-tragedy-history-russian-revolution - I'd like something a bit like Orlando Figes just in terms of overall treatment of the subject, except that its treatment of Lenin and to a lesser extent other Bolshevik leaders lends it a drastically "inevitable bad outcome" flavour after October 1917 (besides also, obviously, a bad portrayal of Lenin being a significant problem in and of itself.)
This recent recent LRB multi-work review by Sheila Fitzpatrick - https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n07/sheila-fitzpatrick/whats-left - makes me think S.A. Smith's Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 might be a thought.
Can you clarify a bit exactly what you are looking for? A military history of the war, a volume more focused on the Bolshevik perspective, a political history of the revolutions, or just a general overview of Russian history from 1917-1923ish?
I see no reason not to read Smith's work if you're interested. Bruce Lincoln's Red Victory is generally considered one of the best objective histories of the war. I would call him impartial rather than friendly to the Bolsheviks, but all the best history is impartial.
I would also be remiss if I did not suggest you look for Jonathon D. Smele's annotated bibliography of the Russian Civil War. Smele has accumulated and remarked on pretty much every work on the subject, and you will definitely find something you want there. For that matter, Smele himself has just written a new history of the Civil War that I have yet to read, titled The "Russian" Civil Wars. As the name suggests, and like Smith's book, the trend in Russian First World War and Civil War historiography is to emphasize the fact that Tsarist and Bolshevik Russia were multinational empires.
Hi there -- while you await an answer from our panel of historians, you may also want to check out the Russia section of our books list.
While I don't know if he is going to have the style you're looking for, I'd suggest any number of works by Rex Wade. He is one of, if not the, leading authorities on the Revolution, and has written several treatments on it. His name was also the first one told to me by a former prof of mine, himself a renown scholar of the era.
I have heard good things about Alexander Rabinowitch's "trilogy" on the russian revolution. Those are the three books:
Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising
The Bolsheviks Come To Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd
The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd
They are not exactly focused on the Civil War itself as a military conflict but they are focused on that time period.