Historically important in Nazi's offensive during World War II, Minsk is today a vibrant city with a rich social life. Some books that will give the traveler a panorama of both Minsk development over time and today's society are:

- Minsk: Yesterday and Today by Vassili Kaleda shows the changes that Minsk has undergone over the Twentieth century with black and white photographs. The texts describing the content of the photographs is in Russian but they have English, French, German, and Spanish translations.

- To have an idea on Misk in contrast with two other cities of the Western World, take a look at And the Wisdom to Know the Difference, Conversations with Residents of San Francisco, Paris, and Minsk by Francis McCollum Feeley, Tatiana Baklanova-Feeley and Theodore Zeldin.  

- Resistance in Minsk by Hersch Smolar.

- The Jews of Moscow, Kiev, and Minsk: Identity, Antisemitism, Emigration by Robert J. Brym and Rozalina Ryvkina.

- The Minsk Ghetto: Soviet-Jewish Partisans Against the Nazis by Hersh Smolar.