Authoritative, essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the frightening breadth and depth of Putin’s methods.
A disturbing account that peels back the layers of the Putin regime to reveal the corruption and violence at the core.
Once a wealthy oligarch and a player in Moscow politics, Khodorkovsky ran afoul of Putin in 2003 and spent 10 years in prison before leaving the country in exile. In this remarkable book, co-written by British journalist Sixsmith, he interweaves the story of Putin’s rise with a personal account of his own fall. The book could have easily turned into a conspiratorial rant, but the text remains focused. Khodorkovsky was an excellent student, studying chemical engineering, and his entrepreneurial streak allowed him to take advantage of the convulsions of the Gorbachev era, first with a bank and later an oil company, Yukos. His wealth led to close contact with Boris Yeltsin, and he even served as an economic adviser. When Putin took over, Khodorkovsky was initially hopeful, but he soon realized the danger of his authoritarian ambitions. Khodorkovsky’s criticisms of Putin, and of the level of corruption in the inner circle, led to his arrest and decade in prison. “You don’t even need to fall out with them to be targeted,” he writes. “They can simply take a fancy to your business or your property. And once they have you in their sights, there is no way out. You have no one to turn to, no one to help you—not the law, not the courts, not the media, not your bosses or your neighbors.” Khodorkovsky eventually fled to London, where he founded the Open Russia movement to promote liberal reform. For this, he earned a price on his head. He devotes the closing chapter to his hope that Russia might eventually become more democratic, although this sounds more idealistic than likely, and Khodorkovsky admits that Putin’s rhetoric of returning Russia to the glory days of Stalin’s time strikes a popular chord.
Authoritative, essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the frightening breadth and depth of Putin’s methods.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-28559-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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
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SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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