A compelling, cleareyed portrait of a dictator whose politics have unfortunate relevance for today.
An illuminating new biography of the cold, calculating ruler on whom the subsequent Soviet state modeled itself.
“Secretive, suspicious, intolerant, acetic, intemperate.” Such is the essence of the portrait of his subject that Budapest-born journalist Sebestyen (1946: The Making of the Modern World, 2015, etc.) extracts from the considerable record. The author does not overwhelm with detail, and he focuses especially on how Lenin’s most important relationships were with women, such as his mother, his wife, Nadya, and his mistress, Inessa Armand. From his beginnings as a brilliant youth to his maturation as a driving, relentless intellectual whose favored method of leadership was merciless carping, Lenin was consistently concerned with the nitty-gritty of power and how to attain it. He was also criticized for fleeing from trouble, as he believed he was too important to the struggle to get arrested. Radicalized at the age of 18 after the “violent drama” of his beloved older brother Sasha’s execution by the czar’s police force in 1887 for attempting to assassinate the czar, Vladimir Ulyanov, as he was then known, “was heir to a long tradition of revolutionary opposition to the Tsars.” Prohibited from studying at university, sent briefly to Siberia, closely monitored by the czar’s police state, the Okhrana (from which Lenin’s Cheka would subsequently and ironically derive its model), and largely supported in every way by his mother and wife, Lenin moved about in exile honing the revolutionary message. Although not as eloquent a writer as Marx or Trotsky, Lenin created a style of argument altogether his own; as the author writes, “he was nearly always domineering, abusive, combative and often downright vicious.” Operating brutally but haphazardly, rather than by a truly coordinated effort, and not averse to using a “criminal gang” to steal on the party’s behalf, Lenin prevailed by sheer force of will. Sebestyen ably captures the man, “the kind of demagogue familiar to us in Western democracies.”
A compelling, cleareyed portrait of a dictator whose politics have unfortunate relevance for today.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-87163-8
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Riveting and exquisitely crafted.
Musician, poet and visual artist Smith (Trois, 2008, etc.) chronicles her intense life with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe during the 1960s and ’70s, when both artists came of age in downtown New York.
Both born in 1946, Smith and Mapplethorpe would become widely celebrated—she for merging poetry with rock ’n’ roll in her punk-rock performances, he as the photographer who brought pornography into the realm of art. Upon meeting in the summer of 1967, they were hungry, lonely and gifted youths struggling to find their way and their art. Smith, a gangly loser and college dropout, had attended Bible school in New Jersey where she took solace in the poetry of Rimbaud. Mapplethorpe, a former altar boy turned LSD user, had grown up in middle-class Long Island. Writing with wonderful immediacy, Smith tells the affecting story of their entwined young lives as lovers, friends and muses to one another. Eating day-old bread and stew in dumpy East Village apartments, they forged fierce bonds as soul mates who were at their happiest when working together. To make money Smith clerked in bookstores, and Mapplethorpe hustled on 42nd Street. The author colorfully evokes their days at the shabbily elegant Hotel Chelsea, late nights at Max’s Kansas City and their growth and early celebrity as artists, with Smith winning initial serious attention at a St. Mark’s Poetry Project reading and Mapplethorpe attracting lovers and patrons who catapulted him into the arms of high society. The book abounds with stories about friends, including Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, William Burroughs, Sam Shepard, Gregory Corso and other luminaries, and it reveals Smith’s affection for the city—the “gritty innocence” of the couple’s beloved Coney Island, the “open atmosphere” and “simple freedom” of Washington Square. Despite separations, the duo remained friends until Mapplethorpe’s death in 1989. “Nobody sees as we do, Patti,” he once told her.
Riveting and exquisitely crafted.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-621131-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
For the author’s fans.
A Fox News journalist and talk show host sets out to prove that she is not “an empty St. John suit in five-inch stiletto heels.”
The child of devout Christians, Minnesota native Carlson’s first love was music. She began playing violin at age 6 and quickly revealed that she was not only a prodigy, but also a little girl who thrived on pleasing audiences. Working with top teachers, she developed her art over the years. But by 16, Carlson began “chafing at [the] rigid, structured life” of a concert violinist–in-training and temporarily put music aside. At the urging of her mother, the high achiever set her sights on winning the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, where she was first runner-up. College life at Stanford became yet another quest for perfection that led Carlson to admit it was “not attainable” after she earned a C in one class. At the end of her junior year and again at the urging of her mother, Carlson entered the 1989 Miss America pageant, which she would go on to win thanks to a brilliant violin performance. Dubbed the “smart Miss America,” Carlson struggled with pageant stereotypes as well as public perceptions of who she was. Being in the media spotlight every day during her reign, however, also helped her decide on a career in broadcast journalism. Yet success did not come easily. Sexual harassment dogged her, and many expressed skepticism about her abilities due to her pageant past. Even after she rose to national prominence, first as a CBS news broadcaster and then as a Fox talk show host, Carlson continued—and continues—to be labeled as “dumb or a bimbo.” Her history clearly demonstrates that she is neither. However, Carlson’s overly earnest tone, combined with her desire to show her Minnesota “niceness…in action,” as well as the existence of “abundant brain cells,” dampens the book’s impact.
For the author’s fans.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-42745-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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