A deeply researched, thought-through, essential history of a protean ideology.
A world-spanning examination of communism and the many forms, none quite right, that it has taken.
More fluent than but kindred to Stephane Courtois’ Black Book of Communism (1999), Mason’s narrative begins with the reasonable fear that the future will belong to China. “Capitalism is in trouble and liberal democracy is imploding,” he writes, while communism is ever evolving, whether one sees this as a distortion or a validation of Marxist theory. In this well-written history, Mason locates the origins of modern communism in a critique of the French Revolution, with its Enlightenment-era presumption that history could be studied scientifically. It’s an idea that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels later ran with: The masses needed to be ruled by a dedicated elite cadre since “the backward peasant majority would always outvote the proletariat.” Whereas Marx insisted on the necessity of worldwide revolution, Lenin put that revolutionary dictatorship in practice in Russia alone, launching a totalitarian state led by what the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin called “a new and very small aristocracy.” Whatever that state was, it wasn’t communist, at least not in the Marxist sense. But, as Mason observes, the winners get to write the history, such that China’s “totalitarian technocracy” is now broadly taken as communism in action. That may be true, he allows, but only to the extent that it matches the statist vision of Henri de Saint-Simon and not the “association of free producers” that Marx espoused. Against communism in its totalitarian forms—and it’s no surprise, as Mason observes, that Putin’s Russia is busily erecting statues of Lenin—he offers an alternative vision of a “humane, democratic, and sustainable path beyond class society.” Engels would have mocked that as “utopian,” but the anti-Bolshevik revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg would likely have approved, for, as she wrote, “Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.”
A deeply researched, thought-through, essential history of a protean ideology.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781668057186
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: today
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.
A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet.
On Aug. 16, 1897, the steam whaler Belgica set off from Belgium with young Adrien de Gerlache as commandant. Thus begins Sancton’s riveting history of exploration, ingenuity, and survival. The commandant’s inexperienced, often unruly crew, half non-Belgian, included scientists, a rookie engineer, and first mate Roald Amundsen, who would later become a celebrated polar explorer. After loading a half ton of explosive tonite, the ship set sail with 23 crew members and two cats. In Rio de Janeiro, they were joined by Dr. Frederick Cook, a young, shameless huckster who had accompanied Robert Peary as a surgeon and ethnologist on an expedition to northern Greenland. In Punta Arenas, four seamen were removed for insubordination, and rats snuck onboard. In Tierra del Fuego, the ship ran aground for a while. Sancton evokes a calm anxiety as he chronicles the ship’s journey south. On Jan. 19, 1898, near the South Shetland Islands, the crew spotted the first icebergs. Rough waves swept someone overboard. Days later, they saw Antarctica in the distance. Glory was “finally within reach.” The author describes the discovery and naming of new lands and the work of the scientists gathering specimens. The ship continued through a perilous, ice-littered sea, as the commandant was anxious to reach a record-setting latitude. On March 6, the Belgica became icebound. The crew did everything they could to prepare for a dark, below-freezing winter, but they were wracked with despair, suffering headaches, insomnia, dizziness, and later, madness—all vividly capture by Sancton. The sun returned on July 22, and by March 1899, they were able to escape the ice. With a cast of intriguing characters and drama galore, this history reads like fiction and will thrill fans of Endurance and In the Kingdom of Ice.
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984824-33-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.
An epistolary memoir of Nelson Mandela’s prison years.
From August 1962 to February 1990, Mandela (1918-2013) was imprisoned by the apartheid state of South Africa. During his more than 27 years in prison, the bulk of which he served on the notorious Robben Island prison off the shores of Cape Town, he wrote thousands of letters to family and friends, lawyers and fellow African National Congress members, prison officials, and members of the government. Heavily censored for both content and length, letters from Robben Island and South Africa’s other political prisons did not always reach their intended targets; when they did, the censorship could make them virtually unintelligible. To assemble this vitally important collection, Venter (A Free Mind: Ahmed Kathrada's Notebook from Robben Island, 2006, etc.), a longtime Johannesburg-based editor and journalist, pored through these letters in various public and private archives across South Africa and beyond as well as Mandela’s own notebooks, in which he transcribed versions of these letters. The result is a necessary, intimate portrait of the great leader. The man who emerges is warm and intelligent and a savvy, persuasive, and strategic thinker. During his life, Mandela was a loving husband and father, a devotee of the ANC’s struggle, and capable of interacting with prominent statesmen and the ANC’s rank and file. He was not above flattery or hard-nosed steeliness toward his captors as suited his needs, and he was always yearning for freedom, not only—or even primarily—for himself, but rather for his people, a goal that is the constant theme of this collection and was the consuming vision of his entire time as a prisoner. Venter adds tremendous value with his annotations and introductions to the work as a whole and to the book’s various sections.
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63149-117-7
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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