This detailed portrait of the Soviet leader lays bare the many contradictions of his political philosophy and career. Historically sandwiched between Stalin and Brezhnev, Khrushchev was nonetheless a pivotal figure in Soviet history. Born into a poor peasant family, he interpreted his personal history as proof of the validity of communism. Like most self-made men, he sincerely and strongly believed in the society that permitted his success, in contrast to some of his more cynical or bourgeois-born colleagues. As a witness to and a participant in the Soviet Union's extraordinary transformation from a backward regime to a space-age industrial and military giant, he never doubted the eventual triumph of communism. At the same time, as Tompson (Political Science/Univ. of Texas, San Antonio) makes clear, Khrushchev recognized the inherent problems faced by the Soviet Union in its attempt to fashion a truly communist society. Tompson has written a political biography that traces Khrushchev's career in a clear pattern of advances and occasional setbacks. In the story of how Khrushchev navigated the uncertain waters of Soviet politics, we see the intricate, labyrinthine workings of the Kremlin: the constant maneuvering for position, favors, and alliances; the secrecy, betrayal, and treachery. For Tompson, Khrushchev's most important act was his ``secret speech'' before the Twentieth Party Congress in February of 1956, in which he criticized the ``cult of personality'' that had enveloped Stalin, although the leader was not disinclined to allow a less demonic cult of his own. In foreign policy, Khrushchev was known more for his missteps, such as the 1956 invasion of Hungary, the Cuban missile crisis, the deterioration of relations with China, and banging his shoe at the UN. Yet in the wake of Gorbachev, readers must acknowledge the enormous burden Khrushchev placed on himself to reform the USSR after Stalin. A sympathetic biography that acknowledges Khrushchev's many flaws and ultimately renders a positive judgment of the peasant- ruler of the Soviet Union.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-12365-5
Page Count: 351
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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