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5 comments about Two or Three Things I Know For Sure.

1. This is a quick read, but packs a lot of power. The author isn't afraid to lay her life out for you, and all her emotions, past and present. Its doubly touching to note, this book was originally an oral presentation she wrote.



2. Dorothy Allison's Aunt Dot said she only new two or three things for sure and added, "Of course,they are never the same things." This slim volume, a family history memoir, celebrates the way that women know and affirms that what women know is different from what men know. Allison not only tells an engaging story, she tells her story with clear compassion for all concerned. That doesn't mean she hedges around about the truth. It means that one of the things she knows for sure is that "if we are not beautiful to each other, then we cannot know beauty in any form." Compassion goes along with being beautiful to one another. This book is both honest and forgiving. and as such reminds us to look with an open heart on our life circumstances. Don't compound the hurt or the suffering with hate suggests Allison in a mere 94 pages. I suspect most people will want to read this book more than once. I pull it out when when I feel my heart closing and each time, the thing I come to know is never the same thing.



3. "Let me tell you a story," is how the author of BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA begins her autobiographical journey, alerting the reading audience from the start that she is a storyteller first and foremost above all else: above her being a woman, a daughter, a sister, a lesbian, a survivor. Indeed, she creates and tells stories in order to better define those qualities she has, the labels she possesses, and with an effort towards cleansing her soul of ugliness in favor of beauty and hope.
   
   Originally designed as a performance piece, that she staged in San Francisco at The Lab in August of 1991, Allison reworked the spoken narrative into this flowing, written memoir.
   
   There are many inspiring, defiantly unsentimental portions of the book, which serve to display Allison's valiant attempts to heal herself while becoming an artist. Unfortunately, there are also Anne Lamott-type lapses into cliche and sap and faux-inspiring writing that fails to ring completely true. The pictures of Allison and the family she writes about that accompany the book are vivid and add an even greater genuineness to the text.
   
   A scene that encapsulates the tone of the book, as well as describing Allison's life-long struggle and that of the girls and women she loves, appears near the end of the book, when Dorothy is visiting her sister and pre-adolescent niece. "I looked into my niece's sunburned frightened face. Like her mama, like her grandmama, like her aunts -- she had that hungry desperate look that trusts nothing and wants everything. She didn't think she was pretty. She didn't think she was worth anything at all." Heartbreaking, real and a truth that haunts the women in Allison's family from generation to generation until... when? That's a question that the author refuses to deal with, probably more out of fear for its answer than anything else.
   
   On a side note, I saw Allison appear live at an event in Orange County in 2006. She was fiery, profane, fearless, and struck me as a serious truthseeker with a motivating message for aspiring writers and aspiring humanists. I was at first taken aback by her brashness, her unapologetic stance about people and politics and education. But as she continued on, she became less guarded, more sympathetic, and ultimately more loving than someone who's seen so much hatred and so much abuse should be expected to be. She was, truly, an inspiring figure up there on the stage.



4. Dorothy Allison:
   No one has put the struggle to be human in terms as stark, alive, and
   desperate and uncertain.
   
   This book is necessary because it reminds even those who don't want to believe it that we are in that terrible, possibly beautiful and desperate place--just trying to get our leg muscles to work, or our hearts.



5. Done originally as a theater piece, "Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure" is moving, a quick read, and educational. In other words, it's everything you'd expect from one of our finest contemporary writers. I didn't see it when it was performed as a show. As a memoir, it is very good. My only criticism is -- and it is not so much as a criticism as a wish -- that I wanted to know more, especially about Allison's Aunt Dot and her mother. The book is generously illustrated with photographs of Allison and her family through the years. There is a piece in the book family photographs in a box, pictures of relatives Allison knew little, if anything, about. I would have loved if that section were expanded upon, and maybe to have seen some of the photos. Succinct and thought-provoking (not to mention heart-tugging), this short book makes for a valuable reading experience.

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5 comments about Stalin: Triumph & Tragedy Part 1 Of 2.

1. Harold Shukman is a professional historian, an Emeritus fellow of St. Anthony's College, Oxford University and a prolific author of major works on Rasputin, Stalin, Trotsky, and is an expert on the communist-socialist period of Russia in general. This 110-page work, published in 1999, is highly readable and covers its complex material with expert balance, selecting and compressing the extremely rich detail and competing interpretations (held to an absolute minimum) with ease. The overall impression is very factual and objective, the author's attitude to the man Stalin confined to very brief comment on pages 1 and 98. All in all this is an ideal introduction to the man and the period, suitable for GCSE (age 15/16) students, first year undergraduates, or the interested layman. Mr Shukman all but ignores the complexities of Soviet economic disasters, but this would require a much larger book. (Anyone interested in a selection of basics would do well to try `Basic Economics' by Thomas Sowell, professor of economics at Stanford University, a book which is an veritable education in itself. Anyone interested in professional analysis covering the period of Lenin's NEP to the point of Soviet collapse, by two top Soviet economists, would do well to consult `The Turning Point' by Shmelev & Popov (English translation, 1989).) It should also be borne in mind that the large bulk of previously secret archive materials of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (terminated: 1989) is still being declassified and carefully studied, so the fact that reports of these atrocities apparently get worse as the 21st century progresses is simply due to the process of the full truth taking time to get its boots on. In 2005 an analysis of the Soviet Gulag (concentration camps) gave a tally of 43 million Russians killed: 30 million died in the camps, 13 million died in the freezing transport trains en route. A good summary of the period of East German socialist tyranny has yet to come to my attention, but the 2006 German film on DVD `The Lives of Others' (Das Leben der Anderen) will do if you want a dramatic sample of life behind the Iron Curtain under der Stasi.
   
   Although the books in this series can seem expensive on a cost per page basis, it is the quality that counts, and as a fast overview they represent good value. This book on Stalin makes an interesting comparison to another in the series: `Mao Zedong' by Delia Davin. This is especially instructive in revealing some of the Soviet dominance of China in the twentieth century, which killed millions of peasants there too. But what really burns me is that socialists are so holier-than-thou.
   
   CONTENTS
   Chronology (birth of Stalin 1878, to death 1953)
   
   1. Introduction
   Thumbnail sketch of his career, as the `outstanding mediocrity'
   
   2. Beginnings
   1878- : Georgia, home and education; Lenin and Trotsky; early criminal tendencies
   
   3. Party worker
   1903- : armed bank robbery; journalism; Bolsheviks and Mensheviks vie for party control
   
   4. Power
   1914- : war and Revolution; Molotov; the Red Guard, state and party apparatus set up, Cheka secret police; German-Soviet peace pact made at Brest-Litovsk in 1918 at huge cost to Russia
   
   Photographs: including his police mug-shot and one with an unpopular former colleague airbrushed out (the Marxist approach to history!)
   
   5. Lenin's Heir
   1918- : Lenin orders murder of Tsar and his family; Lenin's NEP (New Economic Policy); The Red Terror, Orthodox churches and priests destroyed, Stalin and Trotsky clash; peasant farmers suffer State collectivisation; Lenin dies; Trotsky deported; Stalin rules)
   
   6. The Great Turn
   1929- : kulak farmers resist State robbery of grain for the cities and are dekulakised by Stalin (class warfare!); millions starve or are killed by the NKVD secret police; first Five Year Plan for industrialisation; economists face firing squad for pointing out flaws in plans; Stalin's private life)
   
   7. Stalin the Executioner
   The 1930s: State and party purges of opponents; the `Big Lie' re-writes history from Marxist view; Stalin aspires to become a god; law courts controlled by party; powers of NKVD secret police enlarged; Trotsky assassinated in 1940, in Mexico by NKVD using the `ice pick to the head' technique; 7 million enemies of the State shot; Moscow underground Metro opens - so it's not all bad then)
   
   8. The Nation Revived
   1939- : Nazism and Stalinism - mutually hostile but similar in many ways; Hitler and Stalin make secret pact to allow USSR to annex Polish, Ukrainian, and Baltic territory; Hitler invades USSR in 1941; war excuses any degree of Soviet tyranny over its own people; church partly restored to boost national feeling; Churchill declares existence of the `Iron Curtain' in 1946; communist party purge - 2000 shot in Leningrad; paranoia affects his judgement, retreats from public exposure; targets Jews to create a scapegoat; dies 1953; his top henchman Beria is executed by the new rulers
   
   Conclusion
   Russian memories today are short and selective - many hanker for the basics provided for all by Stalin but forget the starvations, fear of the Gulag, and injustice of the secret police.
   
   Notes (chapter references to more academic works and sources)
   
   Bibliography (main general sources, some by insiders, eg Molotov and Trotsky)
   
   So: people aren't equal, you can't make them equal, and it's wrong to try.



2. This book is four-star worthy because of Volkogonov's look inside Soviet archives and his insider position. Perhaps it sounds and reads a bit heavy not just because it's written at least somewhat to an academic office but also because it's reflecting Stalin's bureaucratic personality in that way.
   
   One of the best parts of this book was the chapters covering the period between the purges and Stalingrad, where we see just how paralyzed, thinned out and more the post-purge Red Army was.
   
   That said, I do agree with many reviewers that this book was a bit heavy, and more designed for professional use. And that said, I've got books far more footnoted, and one on the history of the Goths that has at least as many names unpronounceable by many modern American lips.
   
   It would be interesting to have a revised edition based on 20 more years of looks at the Soviet archives, and with better editing.



3. The book is the detailed biography of Stalin. Not an easy read, it is probably more suited to be a dry academic reference text, rather than bedtime reading. But I enjoyed it.
   
   Starting and finishing it is tedious, the book is just too big. But each chapter may be read separately, depending on what topic interests you most. Assasination of Kirov, Stalin's disposal of colleagues on his way to power, his policies during war, Stalin's last years - these and other topics may be read separately.
   
   No historical book can be absolutely objective, and this one carries opinions and impressions of the author. There is very little personal input, though. And there is no hype that often accompanies bokks on tyrants.
   
   As I said, I like the book. I learned a lot and actually re-read a few chapters.



4. 
   There are literally hundreds of books on Joseph Stalin to choose from. But if you are looking for a basic entry-level book that is easy to read and for a low price, I would definitely recommend this one.
   
   Although this book is short (just a little over a hundred pages), it contains the most significant information about Stalin's personal and political life; his youth, early adulthood, rise to power, the insanity of his murderous crimes, his own personal paranoia and ultimately, his execrable death. Some of the events that are reported in this book are quite fascinating, in my opinion, which make this book a very interesting read. Stalin's relationship to his comrades and a few family members are also accounted.
   
   From my perspective, this enlightening biography on Stalin is perfect for those who don't have the time or motive to read an encyclopaedia-size book on the former dictator. I think that high school and College students will particularly enjoy reading this book.
   
   Fantastic work!



5. I agree with a_reader_999 (review elsewhere on this page) that Mr. Volkogonov allows his judgement to be clouded by his own Leninist views, blames everything bad on Stalin, and like a lot of Marxists, still lives in denial. For someone having spent his whole life on something, accepting defeat can be a very giant step indeed, so one tends to be sympathetic, but it does not make for quality objective history writing. But minus the diatribes and the nitpicking, this work provides a lot of details for the history buff, and is also quite interesting reading.

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5 comments about Nicholas and Alexandra Part II.

1. This is an all-encompassing authoritative biography of the last ruling Romanovs, and Massie has compiled a thorough and well-researched insight into the lives of Nicholas and Alexandra. Even forty years after its original publication and long after the fall of the Soviet Union, it is a relevant part of Russian history. Massie is very sympathetic in his presentation of the royal family and addresses pertinent questions about the fall of the monarchy. If Alexis, the heir to the throne, had not had hemophilia, would the influence of Rasputin not have been necessary? And if Rasputin were never in the picture, would the monarchy have suffered such a tarnished reputation?
   
   The book painted a very vivid picture of the Royal Family based on hundreds of sources and letters. Nicholas is an incapable Tsar but a warm-hearted, devoted husband and father. Alexandra seems frantic and ill at ease (and often just ill) in her constant concern over the life of her son. And I love that I felt I got to know each of the children, Olga, Tatiana, Marie, Anastasia, and Alexis more individually and personally. This made their demise all the more heartbreaking. This book also gave me a greater understanding of the political climate of the time in Russia and a better comprehension of the revolution and the roles of Lenin, Trotsky, and other important players (although I occasionally found some difficulty keeping the various Russian names straight). Overall, this is a captivating book and the saga is all the more intriguing because it's history. I will definitely be interested to read some of the more recent material that Massie presents in The Romanovs: The Last Chapter.



2. I first read Nicholas and Alexandra many years ago as a 14 year old. It was a transformative experience for me, awakening what has been a lifelong passionate interest in royal biography and Russian history. Now that I'm in my early fifties, I recently reread Nicholas and Alexandra for the first time in about twenty years, and it continues to have the same magic.
   
   Robert K. Massie became interested in the last Tsar of Russia because he, like Nicholas, was the father of a hemophiliac boy. Massie spent long hours reading about hemophilia and famous hemophiliacs, and he was fascinated by the way Russian and world twentieth century history turned on a chance genetic defect. Had Tsarevich Alexis not had hemophilia, it is probable that Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra would not have come under the malign influence of Gregory Rasputin, the Siberian faith healer who had a catastrophic effect on the Russian government before and during World War I; leading to the Russian Revolution, the rise of Communism, and the deaths of Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children. Its an interesting thesis that still holds up well, though Massie's focus on the inner tragedy of the Tsar's family tends to make him discount the many other problems from which pre-revolutionary Russia suffered. Massie also has a natural tendency to whitewash Nicholas and Alexandra (parents of hemophiliacs have a special bond with those who share their trauma, after all), by barely mentioning such negative traits as the Tsar's anti-Semitism and the Empress' many neuroses.
   
   The book remains an extraordinary work of art. Massie's descriptions of the Russian landscape and his finely drawn character sketches are wonderfully rich and detailed. He is able to explain the political and social complexities of the era colorfully and wittily, even when dealing with such abstractions as the differences between Social Democrats, Social Revolutionaries, and Bolsheviks. Most of all, Massie is able to make us weep for the Romanovs: a man who was a bad Tsar but a good husband and father, a woman who destroyed her family while trying to keep her son alive, and five innocent young people who never had a chance to lead happy, productive lives. Every time I read Nicholas and Alexandra I tremble again at the thought of their last awful moments, but I am enriched still more by the chance to read such a magnificent work of art and scholarship.



3. In 2000, there was much talk about the "most important person of the 20th Century." My choice was always Gavrilo Princip, the young Bosnian assassin who killed Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, igniting World War I, which caused the Russian Revolution, Communism, and the Treaty of Versailles, which led to Naziism, World War II, atomic bombs, and the Cold War.
   
   Of course, there were other factors which formed the tragedy of the twentieth century, and perhaps some of these historical events would have happened anyway. Almost for certain, the Romanov Monarchy would have fallen or been transformed out of recognition without the help of Gavrilo Princip's bullets.
   
   Although the Ottoman Empire was always referred to as "the sick man of Europe," Robert K. Massie illustrates that Russia was not very well either, despite appearances. An obsolescent autocracy, the Russian Empire was mired in time at the dawn of the twentieth century, the great mass of its people existing much as they had 100 years earlier.
   
   Massie's theory, that the hemophilia of Alexis, the young Tsarevich, had an inordinate influence of Russian and subsequent world history, is well thought-out, though perhaps an oversimplification. Yet, it cannot be discounted. The Romanov Dynasty had ruled Russia then for 300 years, and brought the country, by fits and starts, slowly into the orbit of the modern world. Despite this, there is much truth in the observation that "Lenin inherited a nation playing beside a manure pile and Stalin bequeathed a nation playing with an atomic pile." This is not to defend Stalinism, but only to say how little the Romanovs did overall to modernize their State.
   
   When Nicholas II inherited the throne after his father's untimely death, he was woefully unprepared to rule. Dominated for years by archconservative and anti-modernist members of his family, he did little to educate his people, provide health care, build infrastructure, or lift the heavy cloak of official repression that lay over all but ethnic Russians in his realm, or the cloak of cultural repression that lay over the ethnic Russians.
   
   Yet Massie shows us a man and a family of uncommonly kind nature in Nicholas II and his family. His daughter Olga paid personally for the care of a handicapped subject she spied from her carriage one day. The Tsaritsa, Alexandra, despite a reputation as an uncaring woman, herself nursed sick friends before the war and horribly wounded soldiers during the war. The family built hospitals and schools in and around the various cities wherein lay the royal estates. They acted to ameliorate suffering wherever they saw it, without reservation.
   
   Of course, this was the problem. They acted only on what they saw with their own eyes, never recognizing that these sufferings were endemic throughout the realm. Their myopia was part and parcel of the lives of the citified upper classes, completely divorced from the mass of agrarian peasants in the countryside, magnified by the hermetically sealed nature of being an Imperial Family, aided and abetted by sycophants and the self-serving, who kept the real world at a very long arm's length, in order to maintain their own privileged positions. Living in a bubble within a bubble, they were just not aware of conditions in most of Russia.
   
   Nicholas II ruled over the largest domain on earth. Russia today is still the world's largest nation, even shorn of Finland, Poland, the Baltic States, Belarus, the Ukraine, the Central Asian provinces, and (in 1867) Alaska. Sunset in Vladivostok was dawn in Brest-Litovsk. His hundred million subjects included hundreds of peoples speaking hundreds of languages, linked together by a shockingly small road and rail system. The sensitive Nicholas, had he been really cognizant of the shape of things, could have, by a single order, vastly improved the lives of each and every Russian (of course, as he noted, being an autocrat and giving orders does not ensure that they are carried out properly). His greatest failings, as a ruler, all had to do with his decisions to outwardly maintain his Imperial hautre and his autocracy at all costs in the face of cataclysmic change.
   
   This bubble-within-a-bubble existence however, could not spare them from the fact of the Tsarevich's hemophilia. A genetic disorder inherited through the female line (Alexis' Great-Grandmother was Queen Victoria, whose progeny were ravaged by the disease), it prevents the clotting of the blood. When Alexis was born in 1904, the world was a full lifespan away from the development of a usable clotting factor; most hemophiliacs simply bled out and died. The Tsarevich was protected by a full retinue, but this did not help him, and the boy was often in screaming agony and close to death from what might in another child, be a bad bruise. The Heir, therefore lived in a bubble within a bubble within a bubble.
   
   The Tsaritsa, Alexandra, was a solemn, shy, but deeply emotional and loving woman, nicknamed "Sunny" by her husband. To the world, she presented an aloof exterior, and was extremely unpopular with her subjects. Had they known the sorrows and agonies she suffered through with Alexis, her realm, and history, might have treated her far better. But the Imperial Family decided to keep Alexis' condition a closely guarded secret, fearing the destabilization of the Monarchy and Russia in the face of a physically frail Heir. This may have been the Imperial Family's worst error, as it robbed them of an outpouring of sympathy and support from a passionate populace.
   
   Alexandra turned to religion, and ultimately, to Gregory Rasputin, a filthy, degenerate, sexually perverse and personally dissolute monk of peasant extraction. Although derided by most, and called a charlatan by many, Rasputin was perhaps one of the most charismatic men in history, had a devoted following (largely comprised of Society women he'd seduced), did have the power, somehow, to control Alexis' bleeding episodes, and therefore, had the Empress's full and unwavering support in all things.
   
   The feared and hated Rasputin may have indeed been a seer or had mystical powers of some sort, judging from circumstances. Rasputin was not really political, but as his influence over the Romanovs grew, his power expanded commensurately, and he was able to have Ministers dismissed, Generals reassigned to sinecures, and policies changed according to his own whims (expressed as messages from God) or concerns. Capable Russian leaders, who did not know the basis of Rasputin's power, suspected the worst of Alexandra, and in challenging Rasputin found themselves toppled from power. As World War I dawned, Russia was upside-down, its best men in internal exile, and woefully unprepared for war. Rasputin himself counseled against war, stating that Russia would collapse from within. Nonetheless, the British, German and Russian grandsons of Queen Victoria went to war.In that war, millions died, empires fell, nations were born, ideological political systems triumphed, and the stage was set for a darker and yet bloodier future.
   
   The Tsar and his genteel family were consumed, ending their days against a wall before a Bolshevik firing squad, probably not understanding, until the end, that they had been in the eye of a hurricane that remade the world.



4. nicholas and alexandra should never had become czar and crazina of russia.nicholas was just to weak spirit and alexandra to strong without know the real russia people.she saw russian as childern who needed to be told how to run their lives by the papa czar.she hide her son illness and brought in a sexual twisted man of god into her family,ruin the romanov's relationship with it's people.stopping changes that would give citzen russian say in their country.in the end the people turn on the romanov's every thing end tragical.



5. I read this book many years ago and have never forgotten it, and I just recently purchased a copy of my own. Robert Massie is an excellent writer who makes this book memorable for the fun and loving family that the Romanovs were and their terrible, tragic end. I'm now collecting more books on the Romanov dynasty and the individual people who made up this fascinating family. For anyone with an interest, this is the place to start.