A well-crafted exposé that suggests that the Cold War began half a century earlier than we’ve been told.
Deep dive into an episode of history that is little known but deserves more exposure.
In 1918, Lenin withdrew Russia from the war against the Triple Entente, having agreed secretly with Germany to do so. U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, “a bored pacifist who doodled and daydreamed in Cabinet meetings until Lenin seized power,” concocted a plot to overthrow Lenin, install a leader friendly to the Allies, and bring Russia back into the war. Woodrow Wilson, writes journalist Carr, overcame his scruples about self-determination and signed off on the plan. Soon, Allied spies were in Moscow gathering information and concocting schemes; one of them, the author suggests, served as the model for Ian Fleming’s James Bond. At the same time, an Allied expeditionary force landed in Archangel, in the Russian Arctic, and engaged with Bolshevik forces, who fought vigorously across a broad front. On the military front, the author shows, the Allied effort was doomed for many reasons: Americans were under British command, never a good formula given national resentments; Allied soldiers of all nations questioned what they were doing in Russia, a former ally, especially when Germany and its allies surrendered; mutinies sprang up along the Allied lines; and when the soldiers finally returned, the U.S. and U.K. governments took pains to sweep the whole thing under the table, undervaluing the efforts of the blameless fighters. Carr’s cast of characters includes some improbable figures: a prison interrogator who later moved to France and invented Chanel No. 5 “to capture the essence of snow melting on black earth”; an American journalist who served two separate prison terms in Russia and then teamed up with filmmaker Merian C. Cooper to make the vaunted documentary Grass; and a “hardened terrorist” named Fanny Kaplan who resisted first the czar and then the Bolsheviks, plotting an almost successful assassination of Lenin. Some reads like history, some like a spy novel, and it’s always eye-opening.
A well-crafted exposé that suggests that the Cold War began half a century earlier than we’ve been told.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64313-317-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.
A wide-ranging critique of leftist politics as not being left enough.
Continuing his examination of progressive reform movements begun with The Cult of Smart, Marxist analyst deBoer takes on a left wing that, like all political movements, is subject to “the inertia of established systems.” The great moment for the left, he suggests, ought to have been the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd and the accumulated crimes of Donald Trump should have led to more than a minor upheaval. In Minneapolis, he writes, first came the call from the city council to abolish the police, then make reforms, then cut the budget; the grace note was “an increase in funding to the very department it had recently set about to dissolve.” What happened? The author answers with the observation that it is largely those who can afford it who populate the ranks of the progressive movement, and they find other things to do after a while, even as those who stand to benefit most from progressive reform “lack the cultural capital and economic stability to have a presence in our national media and politics.” The resulting “elite capture” explains why the Democratic Party is so ineffectual in truly representing minority and working-class constituents. Dispirited, deBoer writes, “no great American revolution is coming in the early twenty-first century.” Accommodation to gradualism was once counted heresy among doctrinaire Marxists, but deBoer holds that it’s likely the only truly available path toward even small-scale gains. Meanwhile, he scourges nonprofits for diluting the tax base. It would be better, he argues, to tax those who can afford it rather than allowing deductible donations and “reducing the availability of public funds for public uses.” Usefully, the author also argues that identity politics centering on difference will never build a left movement, which instead must find common cause against conservatism and fascism.
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781668016015
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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