A chilling, compellingly written exploration of Russian politics.
An in-depth examination of the rise and fall of a Russian oligarch.
Russian scholar Knight, author of Orders To Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder (2017), here delves into the role of ill-fated oligarch Boris Berezovsky in aiding the rise of Vladimir Putin to power. The son of a Jewish civil engineer, Berezovsky’s relatively comfortable upbringing allowed him to pursue a career in scientific research, a background the author contrasts with Putin’s hardscrabble childhood. While Berezovsky parlayed his scientific knowledge into business partnerships with Russian automobile manufacturers, Putin saw his path to advancement in working for the KGB. Knight traces the two men’s separate careers to the point of their first encounter in October 1991 and their subsequent influence with Boris Yeltsin. (Using his wealth to gain control of television networks and print media, Berezovsky was instrumental in helping Yeltsin deflect accusations of corruption and stay in office, thereby ensuring the rise of Putin, Yeltsin’s handpicked successor.) Knight’s thorough research and broad comprehension of Russian politics since the Soviet era allows her to deftly draw linkages between the events that led to Berezovsky’s downfall as she also notes aspects of Berezovsky’s personality that contributed to his demise: “…Putin seems to have wisely grasped that such cautious behavior was the only way to survive—and get ahead—in the highly dysfunctional and unpredictable Kremlin. Such wisdom eluded the mercurial Berezovsky.” The author details how Berezovsky’s support of Kremlin whistleblower Alexander Litvinenko and his public chiding of Putin in the media were countered by a steady effort to destroy Berezovsky’s already shady reputation abroad. The result, as Knight astutely points out, was that Berezovsky’s warnings about Russian authoritarianism went largely unheeded: “His ambition took precedence over concerns about Russia’s democratic development, and his hubris blinded him to the dangers of Putin’s rise to power until it was too late. But he was far from alone in failing to recognize Putin for who he was.”
A chilling, compellingly written exploration of Russian politics.Pub Date: May 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781501775086
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
PERSPECTIVES
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