I am planning to get a book about this subject and this is the only book about that here on r/askhistorians booklist. However I wanted to double check if it is still the best one on the subject or I should look elsewhere? I am asking this because the book is from 2004 which is pretty significant age for a book which deals with not-so-old events. I was wondering if there has been any new research or books written that has newer, better information in them than this book by Anne Applebaum?
Edit: I looked around and there are few places where Applebaum's book is listed as popular history and that it is not the best one on the subject at all. I wonder then why is it on the booklist here then. Many poeple recommend getting "The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror" by Oleg V. Khlevniuk instead.
The book list...needs some updating. This is something the flairs are discussing.
Applebaum's book is popular history, and for what it's worth won a Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction. The history bit is generally fine, although the introduction is basically an editorial.
Khlevniuk's book is better history, but it's also more academic, which may or may not make it a little harder for the general reader. It tells a story more restricted in time (the 1930s) and does so through copying and analyzing primary documents from various Russian archives.