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THE YEAR I WAS PETER THE GREAT

Name: THE YEAR I WAS PETER THE GREAT
Author: Marvin Kalb
ISBN: 978-0-8157-3161-0

1956--KHRUSHCHEV, STALIN’S GHOST, AND A YOUNG AMERICAN IN RUSSIA

by Marvin Kalb ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 10, 2017

An intriguing eyewitness historical account rendered in a surprisingly pedestrian manner.

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A veteran TV news correspondent’s memoir of his first assignment in Russia, which corresponded with Nikita Khrushchev’s unprecedented “thaw.”

A graduate student studying Russian history and language in 1956, Kalb (Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War, 2015, etc.) was plucked by the State Department to do translation work for an international organization in Moscow. In his first memoir, the former anchor of NBC’s Meet the Press and senior adviser at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the author, now in his 80s, switches from writing history to writing about himself to depict this extraordinarily enlightening year—not an easy task. He relies on a diary he kept during this year working as a translator/interpreter, traveling around Russia, and even meeting Khrushchev himself, who made a historic address to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union tearing down the cult worship of the once-untouchable Stalin, who had died in 1953. Raised in the Bronx and in Washington Heights, Kalb attended City College in the footsteps of his older brother, Bernard, who became a New York Times journalist and whose advice proved prophetic: if the author wanted to become a journalist, he should “cultivate an area of expertise…that would catch the eye of an editor or producer.” Learning Russian proved to be the ticket. In Moscow, Kalb was assigned the work of translating and analyzing the Soviet press, which would give clues to what was really going on in the Kremlin. Khrushchev’s speech did change history, and during a time of enormous political uncertainty, Kalb describes scenes of spontaneous youthful demonstrations at the Lenin Library, which would spread that summer to the East Bloc. The author has an amazing story of an important year in Russian history, but the prose doesn’t always match the gravity of the events he recounts.

An intriguing eyewitness historical account rendered in a surprisingly pedestrian manner.

Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-8157-3161-0

Page Count: 300

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
ASSIGNMENT RUSSIA
by Marvin Kalb

- BOOK REVIEW
ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE
by Marvin Kalb

- BOOK REVIEW
IMPERIAL GAMBLE
by Marvin Kalb

- PROFILES
Marvin Kalb

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)