The author provides fascinating details (especially concerning Ukraine) about this fraught, historic time.
A dour, authoritative look at the last bitter months of 1991 leading up to the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Plokhy (Ukrainian History/Harvard Univ.; The Cossack Myth: History and Nationhood in the Age of Empires, 2012, etc.) uses access to newly declassified documents and rich primary sources for a close study of these final decisive months, from the July summit in Moscow between President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Gorbachev’s resignation from the defunct state on Christmas Day. Bush was sympathetic to the travails of Gorbachev and, unlike his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, wanted to proceed with caution as the satellite republics began to peel off from the Soviet motherland under Gorbachev’s new reform policies. The second most populous Soviet republic, Ukraine, was a prize neither Gorbachev nor Boris Yeltsin wanted to lose, however, as underscored in Bush’s unfortunate (for Ukrainian independence) “Chicken Kiev” speech, in which he drew a wishy-washy line between “freedom” and “independence.” Events hurtled to a climax as Gorbachev and his family were virtually imprisoned in his Crimean dacha by a “state of emergency” when the KGB hard-liners attempted a clumsy coup d’état—which very well might have succeeded in the old-school Soviet style if Yeltsin had not made a strong, public stance and Bush and the Western media not made their dissatisfaction known. Yeltsin and the Russian Federation emerged triumphant, with Gorbachev clearly in retreat, forced to ban the Communist Party at Yeltsin’s instigation. Once Ukraine grasped the new political landscape, its parliament voted overwhelmingly for independence, causing shock waves throughout the union. Plokhy delineates the nerve-wracking wrangling over maintaining some form of economic union of Slavic republics, up to the very end, while Bush and others supported Gorbachev and a Soviet center—which could not hold.
The author provides fascinating details (especially concerning Ukraine) about this fraught, historic time.Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-465-05696-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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