An intriguing march to revolution, told here with clarity and insight.
The award-winning fiction writer revisits the exciting, messy story of an explosive Russia on the brink of civil war.
London-born novelist and political theorist Miéville (Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories, 2015, etc.) takes on the roiling events of the Russian Revolution on the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik insurrection. From the beginning of 1917, events occurred at a dizzying pace and involved a rich cast of characters, which the author delineates at the end of the book in a “Glossary of Personal Names.” Miéville tells the story in a frank, mannerist fashion. Of course, since readers know the outcome (“purges, gulags, starvation, mass murder”), there is a sense of dark foreboding throughout. The author questions whether it was inevitable that Vladimir Lenin and his cohort would shift increasingly to the left and embrace violent insurrection. No: events were constantly shifting and up in the air, and Miéville presents the action with his novelist’s eye. Looking to the “prehistory of 1917,” the author chronicles the cataclysmic changes in Russia in the late 19th century especially, including emancipation of the serfs in 1861 by Alexander II, who was assassinated by “People’s Will” radicals in 1881. “The man of the future in Russia,” noted populist writer Alexander Herzen, “is the peasant.” The Marxists believed that autocratic Russia was not yet ripe for socialism. Thus, the events that unfolded over the next two decades, as the working class gained confidence and size, were inchoate until brought into sharper focus by external crises such as the Russo-Japanese War, anti-Jewish pogroms, the institution of a “consultative parliament,” the Duma, by Czar Nicolas II, and the deeply unpopular mobilization for war against Germany in 1914. It was a “fraught and protean political culture,” as the author writes, juggling the many activist protagonists such as Leon Trotsky, who was working to incorporate the incendiary ideals of Lenin.
An intriguing march to revolution, told here with clarity and insight.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78478-277-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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