A book that underlines why Gorbachev was almost inconceivable without Khrushchev.
It’s not often that the proceedings of a conference are read by anyone other than the participants (and often not even by them), but this book, originating in an international conference on the centennial of Nikitia Khrushchev's birth, is both important and even moving.
Khrushchev is one of the most remarkable and paradoxical figures to have arisen in the Soviet or any other system. A convinced Communist, an admirer and close collaborator of Stalin, he was intimately involved with some of the worst purges of the 1930s and 1940s. In Moscow archives, his signature (as the party secretary) appears on the list approving the execution of thousands of party functionaries—5,000 of whom were shot as part of Moscow's quota. As a regional party boss in the 1930s, he deported more than two million people from the western Ukraine. “I’m up to my elbows in blood,” he said after his retirement. “I sincerely believed in Stalin at the time and did everything. . . . That's the most terrible thing, what burdens my soul.” And yet, even at the height of the purges, Khrushchev took considerable risks in seeking the rehabilitation or release of some accused, even in the face of Stalin's irritation. And while his famous secret speech condemning Stalin was agreed to by the Presidium, it was, writes Vladimir Naumov, an “act of high civil courage” that could have, if it had gone wrong, cost him his life. Solzhenitsyn himself credited Khrushchev with a profound spiritual impulse in his determination to release prisoners from the Gulag. But the importance and subtlety of these analyses lie in the nuances that the authors, approaching Khrushchev from so many perspectives, bring to his life. One revelation is the evidence that the public, unlike the intellectuals, may have disapproved of the speech.
A book that underlines why Gorbachev was almost inconceivable without Khrushchev.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-300-07635-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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