A subtle, profound, and authoritative assessment of the life and sudden death of the Soviet military by the former director of the National Security Agency. By almost every measure, the Soviet armed forces were the largest in the world. By 1985, they were nearly 6 million strong, with another 25 million reserves. Behind that force stood a military-industrial complex far larger than the West understood, accounting for at least 20 percent and perhaps more than 30 percent of GNP. It was plain to Mikhail Gorbachev and even to military leaders that, if the Soviet Union was to deal with its economic crisis, it had to bring these expenditures under control. The genius of this analysis is to show how a —cold, calculating, and brilliantly duplicitous— Gorbachev outmaneuvered not only his opponents in the Politburo and the military but even himself. His weakness in economics has been widely commented on, but Odom shows that his large, unilateral reductions in the size of Soviet forces, intended to show the West that the Soviet Union was serious about negotiating mutual reductions, began the process of disintegration. Glasnost also turned a harsh light on the realities of military life. Odom argues that there was a serious moral deterioration in the military in the1970s and ’80s, that hazing became increasingly dangerous and uncontrolled, and that resistance to conscription developed rapidly. Many in the military saw the danger and opposed his policies, but the close relationship between the party and the armed forces made independent action difficult. The military leadership was also —too corrupt, weak, careerist, and indecisive to act on its own.— The final irony was when a group of generals around Yeltsin, for corrupt reasons of their own, schemed to prevent the Soviet military resuscitation in the short-lived Commonwealth of Independent States’ armed forces. A careful, thoughtful, and outstanding contribution to the understanding of a tumultous period.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-300-07469-7
Page Count: 520
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.
A highly instructive exploration of “current affairs and…the immediate future of human societies.”
Having produced an international bestseller about human origins (Sapiens, 2015, etc.) and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny (Homo Deus, 2017), Harari (History/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today’s myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. As the author emphasizes, “humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths.” Three grand stories once predicted the future. World War II eliminated the fascist story but stimulated communism for a few decades until its collapse. The liberal story—think democracy, free markets, and globalism—reigned supreme for a decade until the 20th-century nasties—dictators, populists, and nationalists—came back in style. They promote jingoism over international cooperation, vilify the opposition, demonize immigrants and rival nations, and then win elections. “A bit like the Soviet elites in the 1980s,” writes Harari, “liberals don’t understand how history deviates from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality.” The author certainly understands, and in 21 painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly “post-truth” world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari’s narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history.
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-51217-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.
A master storyteller’s character-driven account of a storied year in the American Revolution.
Against world systems, economic determinist and other external-cause schools of historical thought, McCullough (John Adams, 2001, etc.) has an old-fashioned fondness for the great- (and not-so-great) man tradition, which may not have much explanatory power but almost always yields better-written books. McCullough opens with a courteous nod to the customary villain in the story of American independence, George III, who turns out to be a pleasant and artistically inclined fellow who relied on poor advice; his Westmoreland, for instance, was a British general named Grant who boasted that with 5,000 soldiers he “could march from one end of the American continent to the other.” Other British officers agitated for peace, even as George wondered why Americans would not understand that to be a British subject was to be free by definition. Against these men stood arrayed a rebel army that was, at the least, unimpressive; McCullough observes that New Englanders, for instance, considered washing clothes to be women’s work and so wore filthy clothes until they rotted, with the result that Burgoyne and company had a point in thinking the Continentals a bunch of ragamuffins. The Americans’ military fortunes were none too good for much of 1776, the year of the Declaration; at the slowly unfolding battle for control over New York, George Washington was moved to despair at the sight of sometimes drunk soldiers running from the enemy and of their officers “who, instead of attending to their duty, had stood gazing like bumpkins” at the spectacle. For a man such as Washington, to be a laughingstock was the supreme insult, but the British were driven by other motives than to irritate the general—not least of them reluctance to give up a rich, fertile and beautiful land that, McCullough notes, was providing the world’s highest standard of living in 1776.
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-2671-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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