An essential and accessible addition to the library of Soviet and post-Soviet studies.
A vivid exploration of Soviet civilization—or, better, the many civilizations of the former Soviet Union.
“Soviet civilization was never static, because it changed so much over time,” writes Cambridge University historian Smith. It was also never wholly coterminous with the Soviet state. The Soviet Union began with the promise of liberation, but soon hardened into a rigidly doctrinaire Leninist state—Leninist as interpreted by Stalin, who ruled unchallenged for more than a quarter century. Against this, slowly and with utmost care, an intelligentsia developed, with a mindset that “was a matter of enlightenment and civilization, but also refinement and culturedness, and above all empathy, kindness, and decency”—in other words, Smith adds, it was “a moral category,” distinct from the apparatchiks. With Stalin’s death in 1953 came “the Thaw,” referring both to the loosening of restrictions but also to that messy, muddy period between winter and full-on spring; under Nikita Khrushchev’s regime, antitotalitarian writers such as Daniil Granin and Boris Pasternak emerged, while the nation “wanted to know what had happened” to friends, family, and comrades during the worst years of the Stalin terror, and Khrushchev, although involved in that terror, also wanted to know “exactly what had happened: who, how many, where, when.” Those who followed Khrushchev and seeded other civilizations, mostly of dissent, were nowhere near as impressive (Smith writes, meaningfully, that in his dotage Leonid Brezhnev became “increasingly fond of medals and honours”) until Mikhail Gorbachev attained power, ending the Soviet state—or, rather, “the Soviet Union, its state and apparatus of republics decolonized itself out of existence.” Yet it reemerged, and with it, dissidents were crushed as the Putin regime invaded Ukraine and “honest voices were silenced.” Smith’s excellent book powerfully explains how government, society, and civilization can diverge, sometimes coexisting, sometimes warring, but always evolving.
An essential and accessible addition to the library of Soviet and post-Soviet studies.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781631498299
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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