by Oleg V. Khlevniuk translated by Nora S. Favorov ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 19, 2015
An ambitious yet manageable biography of Stalin, this book sheds new light on its subject for amateur historians and experts...
Khlevniuk (Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle, 2008, etc.) delves into the existing body of work surrounding Stalin’s life and career to separate fact from fiction, and he crafts a complete picture of a complex man.
The author opens on the final hours of Joseph Stalin’s life. From there, he bounces between a chronological retelling of the dictator’s rise to power and a detailed examination of the man on his deathbed. It’s an interesting choice that lends an element of retrospection from the very beginning, as readers attempt to find linkages between the mythic Stalin in his later years and the young Georgian student Ioseb Jughashvili. Khlevniuk carefully dismantles the many theories and fictions that surround the life of Stalin, a helpful touch given the long-standing lack of official documentation from the Soviet era. In place of speculation, the author offers readers a portrait of Stalin’s rise to and stranglehold on power, grounded in the leader’s paranoia, opportunism, and willingness to rewrite even his own recent history. Khlevniuk offers deep analysis of the political situation in Russia at various key moments in Stalin’s career, which is useful but at times detailed to the point of distraction. Although the author does not give Stalin the benefit of the doubt when it comes to culpability for the many atrocities that took place during his reign, he doesn’t make Stalin an otherworldly monster. Instead, Khlevniuk’s narrative requires readers to hold in mind the many seemingly contradictory facts of his subject’s life at once. A former seminary student, an ambitious revolutionary, a loving father, and a dictator responsible for the deaths of millions: Stalin is all of these, and Khlevniuk makes room for them all.
An ambitious yet manageable biography of Stalin, this book sheds new light on its subject for amateur historians and experts alike.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-300-16388-9
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
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
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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...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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