Book excerpt: Drawing on declassified material from Stalin’s personal archive, this is the first systematic attempt to analyze how Stalin saw his world—both the Soviet system he was trying to build and its wider international context. Stalin rarely left his offices and viewed the world largely through the prism of verbal and written reports, meetings, articles, letters, and books. Analyzing these materials, Sarah Davies and James Harris provide a new understanding of Stalin’s thought process and leadership style and explore not only his perceptions and misperceptions of the world but the consequences of these perceptions and misperceptions.