5 comments about Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941.

1. Reading this book gives one insight not only on Stalin but also on the political system that he constructed around his personality. Its effects are still being felt in today's Russia--much of Stalin's struggle with his identity and place in the world was and still is mirrored by the Russian state itself. Tucker is a masterful storyteller; one comes away with a great sense of both the historical moment and the political weight of the subject matter. This book should still be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the Russian political system.



2. Over the years, I have read a number of books on Stalin, some good and some awful and I am convinced that this book, along with Professor Tucker's other work, "Stalin as a Revolutionary" is the best work on this subject (Adam Ulam's work would be the best one volume study of Stalin).
   
   What sets this book apart from the others is Tucker's first rate understanding of Stalin and the world in which he operated. Only someone as stubborn as Stalin could have imagined he was creating paradise on earth while at the same establishing one of the most hellish regime's in world history and Tucker captures him in all of his evil. Even though he is a widely respected actademic, Tucker writes in such a way as to make this 20th century monster understandable to expert and beginner alike.
   
   The only complaint that I have is that Tucker has yet to follow through with the next part of Stalin's career. It seems to be truism of late that no one can complete a multi-volume work on one of the leaders of World War II. Kenneth Davis was unsuccessful in his magnificent FDR biography as was William Manchester in his attempt to capture Churchill in his series of books on the great prime minister. I am only hoping that wealth of material that has become available with the fall of communism and the Soviet Union does not hamper Professor Tucker's efforts.



3. This is an excellent biography of Stalin, the middle book in a proposed trilogy. Tucker weaves events in the Soviet Union around the twisted, paranoid personality of Joseph Stalin, former seminary student. What I found to be the most intriguing was how every time Stalin changed his mind about something, everyone had to fall in line or risk being labeled a "wrecker" or "counter-revolutionary." Stalin was not particularly brilliant, and he was not Lenin's choice as a successor, but he had a genius for bureacratic maneuvering that put him in the powerful position that he held for years. For all his paranoia and all the damage he did to Russia, it is amazing that someone didn't actually knock him off. It is a chilling reflection on how obsequious even the best of us can be when motivated by fear.



4. Neither Stalin, the collectivization crisis, nor the terror suffer from a dearth of good and serious studies. Yet despite the crowded field, Tucker's "Stalin in Power" is by far the best treatment of all three complex events. No other book sets out as credible, well-researched and well considered a theory of the workings of Stalin's mind. The great challenge presented by the Soviet thirties is the comprehension of the real logic behind what appears from the outside as mass irrationality. Most writers' personal models of depth and social psychology are inadequate to the task. Tucker succeeds, by a significant margin.



5. Tucker's careful storytelling hews to historical facts and grippingly narrates Stalin's creeping domination of the Soviet idea. This book is complete. A must read for all interested in recent Russian history.

5 comments about Alexander Hamilton: A Biography.

1. McDonald seems to have set out to write a book emphasizing Hamilton's political and financial/administrative contributions to the new republic and that is what he did. There is relatively little on Hamilton's personal life. For that one must look elsewhere (to Ron Chernow for example). The book is largely successful at what it is trying to do and is very good on the finance/administrative areas. One would expect no less from McDonald. As his other works on constitutional history show, he is an expert on the political philosophy and thought of the time as well as the period's economic theories.
   
   The prose is crisp, direct and clear for the most part but perhaps not the most sprightly ever committed to paper. McDonald can certainly be serious and charming simultaneously as he was in his memoir of his life as a historian (Recovering the Past), but his tone in his more formal work is quite brisk and even heavy at times.
   
   I would downgrade the book somewhat for two reasons: First, as mentioned, it scants the personal life in favor of the ideas and actions. With Hamilton, however, the personal life and conduct were utterly intertwined with his political and physical fates, especially as he grew older and (it seems) both increasingly intemperate and fearful that he had not been accorded sufficient esteem by contemporaries and might not have achieved the degree of 18th century style fame that would cement his reputation for posterity. The duel, for example, is one of the dumbest things that a smart man ever did and was to my mind in large part caused by events in his personal life.
   Second, the book is quite partisan and even hagiographic occasionally. Most biographers sympathsize with their subjects and give them more than the benefit of the doubt; but, judging from the book, Hamilton seems to be in McDonald's all-time personal pantheon of historical heroes and it shows. This may be because McDonald appears to share in some part the distrust of popular democracy that gave rise to Hamilton's fear of government by "the mob." Whatever the reason, Hamilton is seldom portrayed as wrong or even in error.
   
   Overall this is a worthy book by a fine scholar of the period and is especially good at making clear Hamilton's financial systems and political ideas in the context of the times.



2. This biography focuses heavilty on Hamilton's fiscal policies, particularly in his role as Secretary of the Treasury. It is well written and relies heavily on primary sources. The book sometimes becomes heavy reading when McDonald disucsses some of Hamilton's more complex financial dealings.



3. Forrest McDonald wrote this book out of a profound knowledge of the legal, financial, and economic environment of the world of late-colonial America that Alexander Hamilton came into, and of the early Republic, that he transformed. Hamilton was a brave soldier, an astute politician, an extremely talented administrator, a great lawyer and a man of extraordinary personal morality and honor. These characteristics were enough to vault him to the upper reaches of early American society. But his financial and economic program -- that rescued this new and foundering nation -- is the true basis of his greatness.
   
   Hamilton was a man of parts, not least of which was his technical mastery of the financial means to establish and maintain a sound currency and national credit. Apprenticed to a merchant at an early age, he quickly came to appreciate the mentally invigorating effects of the commercial life. He was naturally quick and, as in repudiation of his socially marginal origins, a rigorous adherent to morality and "gentlemanly" honor. His talents, hard work and charm bouyed him up, and he seized each new opportunity with both hands, for his ambition would not let him rest. McDonald tells the story of Hamilton's early years with vigor and interest, but it is clear that the thrust of this book is to elucidate his real accomplishment as Secretary of the Treasury. This was the funding and assumption of the debts that the just-formed United States had inherited, the taxes and tariffs to pay for these, and the financial mechanisms -- including the Bank and the sinking fund -- to create, as out of nothing (or less than nothing) a universal and sound currency, as well as a store of capital to fund businesses, which he felt must be the drivers of the economy.
   
   This book is fairly compact, but gives a good feel for Hamilton the man. If you want more in that line, then the current biography by Ron Chernow is where to look. But here you will learn what Hamilton did that no one else could have done, and that needed doing. Even his enemies -- Jefferson especially -- found, though they repudiated the man and his politics, that in the end they couldn't do without his works.



4. Though this biography is about 25 years old now, it's one on Hamilton that I will not part with. Forrest McDonald has written many books on early colonial American history, on the Constitution and on the presidency of Washington and Jefferson. He is now a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Alabama. This biography is more substantive than Brookhiser's and Brookhiser, I believe, actually consulted with Forrest McDonald when he wrote his book on Hamilton. Our government sometimes consults McDonald on Constitutional issues. As to political affiliations, McDonald describes himself as "an unreconstructed Hamiltonian Federalist". (The federalist party doesn't exist anymore; the present day republican and democratic parties are both offshoots from the previously named democratic-republican party).
   
   I've written this review so many times, mainly because I think that this Hamilton's life deserves a careful study, particularly with regard to his work on getting the Constitution ratified and his work in the treasury department. I highly recommend Frederick Scott Oliver's Alexander Hamilton:an Essay on Union which I've reviewed previously and Knott's Alexander Hamilton and the persistence of myth. Oliver's book is really dated, going back to 1928, and is written from a British viewpoint. He was a Scottish lawyer, read by Lord Tweedsmuir/John Buchan, who unfortunately only wrote several other books; his biography on Hamilton, in my opinion, is beautiful. This biography is good too. I love the quotes from Pope that McDonald heads every chapter with. (Hamilton's favorite authors were Pope and Plutarch). Chapter 8 is entitled Funding and Assumption which deals primarily with Hamilton's solution to the huge debts the colonies owed other nations following the Revolution. Stephen Knott's suggests in his book that Hamilton's solution of setting up a sinking fund would have been a good solution to another huge debt that our Treasury Department had to deal with soon after, (I believe), Bush Sr.'s four years, yet Congress gave this suggestion little notice. What makes McDonald's bio a standout, I think, is the depth of material he provides in explaining what he did as Treasurer. He's also biased toward Hamilton which I think actually is a good thing and paints not so rosy a picture about Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, or Burr.
   
   I think this biography will stand the test of time because of its solid research from Hamilton's birth to his death; McDonald's biography is the most comprehensive and complete. (I haven't read the newer biographies yet; I do believe this one will remain the standard). I was particularly impressed with his treatment of Hamilton's youth and parentage. I'd like to give this book 5 stars, yet American politics and writers to some extent alarm me. If I could, I would give this book 4.5 stars, the 0.5 subtracted for my cautious misgivings stated previously, and, compared to Oliver's biography, Oliver really understands the characters of Hamilton, Jefferson and others, most accurately portrays them, which is what a biography should be. To McDonald's credit, his and Oliver's agree on many points. Highly recommended for serious students of American history and of this most notable, yet rarely noted founding father.



5. The author of this book is so enamored of Hamilton that it completely blinds him to any faults Hamilton may have had. Furthermore, anyone who showed any opposition at all to anything Hamilton proposed is deemed either delusional or a traitor. His treatment of Jefferson and Adams is amazingly disrespectful. Even Washington comes accross as a feeble leader at times without the constant support and advice of his most trusted advisor Hamilton.

   As the book progresses, the bias gets worse and almost preachy.

   Shockingly, the famous duel with Aaron Burr gets only about 3 pages worth of description.....probably since it was not exactly a high point in his life.

   Avoid this book if you want a well-balanced biography.

4 comments about Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House.

1. Egil "Bud" Krogh gives a detailed and fascinating look into the Nixon White House and how basically honest, but naive staffers (and one in particular) were misled or failed to question their orders and proceeded to break the law to stop perceived security leaks. Mr. Krogh writes a very compelling explanation of his reasoning for breaking the law, then describes events and his own logic that led him to admit his guilt and start the long road to redemption beyond a prison sentence and disbarment. It made me realize that it could happen to me or anyone who doesn't look carefully into the long term consequences of their decisions, and thus made it easy to identify with his predicament. For people like me who followed the Watergate proceedings with great interest, it is a book that you can't put down.



2. He was a Navy officer serving on the USS Yorktown by the age of 22, in law school at 26, a staff assistant to the counsel to the president at 29, and Undersecretary of Transportation at 33. At 34, he was in jail. How could this happen to a man raised in a highly moral family, with an excellent education, with Christian Middle American values and a strong sense of patriotism? Yet here was Egil "Bud" Krogh at 33, starting a prison sentence for violating the civil rights of Dr. Lewis Fielding, a California psychiatrist. Bud says the principal cause was the collapse of integrity of those members of the White House's Special Investigative Unit (SIU) who conspired, ordered and carried the break-in of the doctor who had been consulted by Dr. Daniel Ellsburg, the "leaker" of the Pentagon Papers" to the New York Times in early 1971.
   
   In this short book on integrity and decision-making, Bud Krogh tells his story as an advisor in the White House during the Nixon administration and his role as co-director of the SIU. The reason for the book is quite clearly stated in the Dedication: "To those who deserve better, this book is offered as an apology, an explanation, and a way to keep integrity in the forefront of decision-making".
   
   After leaving the Navy in June of 1965, Bud was assisted in his career by John Ehrlichman, a close family friend and father figure to whom he admits he owed complete personal loyalty. Bud was working for Ehrlichman's law firm in Washington State when Ehrlichman was named counsel to the president upon Richard Nixon's election in 1968, and jumped at the chance to move to Washington to assist in the transition, eventually acting as assistant counsel and deputy counsel to the president.
   
   In June of 1971, the "Pentagon Papers", revealing that the United States government was deliberately expanding its role in the war while President Johnson was promising not to do so, were leaked to the New York Times by Dr. Daniel Ellsberg. Subsequent attempts by the Nixon Administration to prevent disclosure failed, including a ruling by the Supreme Court halting Administration attempts to prevent publication. Together with a article in the Times revealing the fall- back position of the U.S. in the first SALT talks, these disclosures created a "crisis of major proportions" in the Nixon White House. Bud was selected to co-direct the White House's Special Investigations Unit (better known as the "Plumbers"), and tasked with stopping leaks of top secret information related to the Vietnamese War, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and other foreign policy operations. The SIU included such now famous names as G. Gordon Liddy, David Young and E. Howard Hunt, and according to Bud the group felt that it "had been given a critical responsibility by the president, and we were embarking on a quest that held great import for the security of the nation."
   
   Bud's SIU decided to go forward with its own investigation. During deliberations, no one in the SIU questioned the necessity, legitimacy, legality, or morality of the proposed covert action. Relying on the president's declaration of a national security crisis, the unit never asked whether their actions were "right". Instead, the unit focused on questions such as who had the skills, who could be trusted, and who would pay for it? They assumed it was "right" because the president was pressing for action and because they believed that information from Dr. Fielding's office would help prevent further leaks from undermining Nixon's plan for ending the Vietnam war. Their loyalties were to their principals and to the president personally.Staff members had been hired on the basis of loyalty to the president and to the senior presidential aide who had recruited him or her. To suggest that national security was being improperly invoked would have been to invite a confrontation with both patriotism and loyalty, well beyond what he was capable of at that time. (In the Foreword, Daniel Ellsberg relates although he had taken an oath of office a number of times, he first noticed the Code of Ethics for Government Service hanging on a wall while he was a visitor at a New Mexico correction facility. He was particularly struck by the first principle: "Put loyalty to the highest moral principles and to country above loyalty to persons, party, or Government department." Ellsberg admits that he didn't recall that it ever occurred to him that he was taking on obligations to the Constitution that might contradict the demands of a cabinet secretary or the president.)
   
   And so the members of the SIU conspired to break into the psychiatrist's office because national security mandated an assessment of Ellsberg's mental state to determine if he was likely to release other classified information. It was seven weeks from the "crisis" declaration to the break-in. Bud sums it up: "In those seven weeks, the SIU had undergone a journey from suspicion to certainty to covert action to frustration to zealotry: hardened by their first action, the Plumbers knew that the rules of engagement had been changed and the conventional respect for laws set aside. A botched break-in, evidence by a few Polaroids, didn't seem to represent much. In practice, however, it was the first irreversible step by which a presidency ran out of control."
   
   The efforts of the SIU didn't end with the break-in of Dr. Fielding's office. Failing to garner any information on Dr. Ellsberg, it was suggested that a break-in be conducted at Dr. Fielding's home. After Bud rejected this idea, his involvement with covert action ended, but his troubles had just begun.
   
   In February of 1973 Bud was confirmed as undersecretary of Transportation. In May he reisgend his position. In August, he was indicted for making a false declaration to the DOJ regarding the travel to California by the Plumbers. Then, in November of 1973, while on a vacation in Williamsburg, VA with his family, he admitted to himself that he felt uncomfortable with the soundness of using national security as a defense: "The more I tried to align my thought with a higher sense of right, the more problematic it became." He recognized that here he was under federal and state indictment, but still free to travel wherever he wanted, speak to the press, worship freely, etc. , but had nonetheless violated another man's civil rights in order to protect the country. If he continued to justify violating rights he continued to enjoy, he felt he would not only be a hypocrite, but a traitor to the fundamental American idea of the right of an individual to be free from unwarranted government intrusion in his life. He decided to plead guilty: "While there may have been some damaging impacts upon national security from Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers, those impacts simply could not justify the invasion of Fielding's rights that this operation involved."
   
   Four days after making his decision, Bud walked into the office of Leon Jaworski, the special prosecutor for Watergate and related crimes and offered to plead guilty to the more serious charge of the deprivation of civil rights in exchange for a dismissal of lesser federal and state charges. His one other stipulation - to avoid any suggestion that he was seeking leniency through testifying, and in the belief that it would be wrong to benefit directly from sharing a truth that would damage others, Bud made it clear that his guilty plea was conditional on the prosecutor's agreement that he would not talk with them or the grand jury until after he'd been sentenced: "It was critically important to me that Judge Gerhard Gesell sentence me solely on the basis of what I did, not for what I might say that would implicate others." Bud pled guilty on November 30th and was eventually sentenced to a term of two to six years of which he was to serve six months, with two years of unsupervised probation.
   
   Bud spices up the book with a few tales that have only a tertiary relationship to the issue of integrity. He tells one story of working in the Nixon transition office as one of those screening the backgrounds of the president's nominees. He also discusses his experiences in Vietnam in December of 1967 studying land reform as a method of defeating the Viet Cong insurgency; the famous May, describes the 1970 Nixon "wee hours" of the morning meeting with war protestors at the Lincoln memorial; and challenges the decisions of the current Bush Administration regarding interrogation techniques and wiretapping.
   
   Reflecting back upon his actions, Bud concludes that his absolute loyalty to President Nixon personally and to his view of the national security threat had skewed his perspective. This kind of absolute loyalty lacked integrity, he came to understand, because it was unbalanced and too exclusive. Loyalty to the president was obviously important up to a point. However, loyalty to the Constitution, to the rule of law, and to moral and ethical requirements should have been key factors in his decisions as well: "The key point I had not internalized was that the integrity in which the president was reposing special trust was my own. Not his integrity, not the integrity of someone else on the staff, but my own. In short, no one can check their personal integrity at the door when they walk into work at the West Wing or anywhere else".
   
   This is an excellent book addressing the competing pressures of individual integrity and personal loyalty and is recommended reading for all, both private and public sector.
   
   
   
   



3. I would primarily like to "second" the previous review (A Needed History Lesson for Our Times). The reviewer says what I would have said, and says it well, particularly in regard to how this valuable book relates to current issues. I would add that I thought I knew the history of the Vietnam era, but I learned so much from this book, and not only concerning the Nixon White House. A very interesting thing to me was the concept of "land reform" and how that issue related to Vietnam, and still is of importance in the world today, when considering how to raise people out of poverty. Bud writes about his time spent in Vietnam, when he was a law student, doing research on land reform issues. He speaks about traveling in the country with reporters who were seeking out members of the Viet Cong to interview. This is just an example of the firsthand and unexpected material that draws a reader in and is so much more involving than one might expect from a book on ethics and integrity. I highly recommend this book, as history, as an explanation of an ethical journey, and, as the previous reviewer said, as a lesson for our time.



4. At a time when we are governed by an administration that whole-heartedly believes "the ends justify the means", it is crucial to step back and look at history; to see where that motto has failed again and again. Bud Krogh writes an insightful and extremely timely account of his time in the White House under Nixon and his direction of the "Plumbers"--created to seal up real (or perceived) leaks that were threatening our national security.
   
   After the 2000 elections, Krogh wrote an open memo, published in the Christian Science Monitor, to Bush's new staff--VP Cheney, Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld--all of whom Krogh had worked with under Nixon in the 1970s. He said as he watched them raise their right hands and swear to uphold the Constitution, it brought back a flood of memories for him when he stood before Nixon and swore to the same oath.
   
   "As I pondered what the new Bush staff would encounter, I realized that I might be able to help by writing a memo to them about one of the central ideas that I had not understood as well as I should have when I was on the White House staff...the absolute imperative to maintain one's sense of integrity in the face of enormous pressures to get results at any cost."
   
   Krogh explains how a good person, raised in the right way, given all the advantages of a young American male, could end up pleading guilty to depriving another of his civil rights and going to prison. Loyalty to his superiors, including Nixon, overshadowed his oath to uphold the Constitution and that lead him to orchestrate the illegal break-in of Dr. Louis Fielding's Psychiatric office in California for the express purpose of stealing Daniel Ellsberg's personal file to try to discredit him. Ellsberg had leaked the "Pentagon Papers" to the press and Nixon believed this to be a serious national security threat.
   
   History has remembered Watergate as the downfall of Nixon's administration, but through Krogh's easy-to-read narrative of the events leading up to Watergate, we find that the break-in and burglary of Dr. Fielding's office was the "seminal event in the chain of events that led to Nixon's resignation".
   
   Obviously, Krogh's letter to the Bush staff has gone largely unheeded as we learn almost daily about unwarranted wiretapping; holding prisoners without cause; torture at Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay; Rove; Libby; the list goes on and on.
   
   Who was it that said "those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it."?
   
   At the end of his book, Krogh has created a model called the "integrity zone"; steps that each individual in public or private life can take to ascertain whether the path they have chosen is one of integrity or convenience. With three questions: Is it whole and complete? Is it Right? Is it good? one can quickly figure out if they're standing on solid ground or standing at the edge of a slippery slope. After the events of 9/11, if the Bush administration had stopped to ask those questions, we may well be living in a vastly different world than the one we live in today.
   
   For anyone who is concerned about today's political environment and interested in where we've come from and how we got here, this is a must read. I think Krogh is an appropriate person to get this message across. It speaks volumes about who Bud Krogh is as a man of integrity that Daniel Ellsberg wrote the forward and calls him a friend today.

5 comments about George Kennan: A Study of Character.

1. This remarkable book is both an act of filial piety and a reference point for future historians: Kennan must be taken seriously, must endure, and must be seen at least as one of the important ships in a small--and not growing-- flotilla of great American statesmen. Lukacs performs a service of recovery amidst the detritus of current American policies, in showing with great subtlety how men of wisdom once took a considered if not pure approach to diplomatic relations, and how the amorphous beast of public opinion, embodied in Congressional representatives more than ever subject to the vicissitudes of polls and "focus groups", influenced and continue to influence--and frustrate--statecraft.
   Kennan represented a rare strain in the American character, a man deeply immersed in European civilization, history, and languages, aware of America's profound European roots, who put the sum of his knowledge to use in addressing deep questions going to the heart of the American experience, teasing out the tensions inherent in the various strands of the American outlook. Remarkably, Kennan's greatest enduring influence came perhaps in the second fifty years of his life through his writings and lectures, a massive outpouring before which even a historian of Lukacs's extraordinary capabilities stands in awe.
   Kennan was remarkably consistent throughout his life in maintaining that America does not represent a Chosen Nation destined to lead mankind from darkness, that, in John Adams's words, "we are friends of liberty all over the world; but we do not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy". If this saying has been too-oft quoted by opponents of the invasion of Iraq who, despite their unqualified support for JFK's abstract principles of intervention, which I have not heard repudiated by a single self-styled liberal, then we must understand it in the context of Kennan's views: he advocated firmness when called for, in responding to the North Korean incursion into South Korea, in providing detailed proposals to create demilitarized and denuclearized zones in Western Europe and to end the partition of Germany, not to say his firmness in standing up to "anti anticommunism" during the witch hunts of Senator McCarthy, while recognizing that communists and their sympathizers had indeed infiltrated the US government to a degree. In short, he did not hesitate to assert American interests nor shrink from recommending the judicious deployment of American military power. While his famous "X" article described a political strategy, he was also aware that the ability to apply force is a necessary, if not sufficient condition of any containment policy.
   As Lukacs makes clear, Kennan recognized the duality running through American politics, itself drawing at its source from the very New England qualities that Kennan professed to admire and of which he himself was partly a product. If his soul and intellect were haunted by an older, deeper Scots and European pessimism, he was also a product of the Middle West, and possessed very American traits, although a progressivist instinct may not have been among these despite his Wisconsin provenance. This grounding led him to be unafraid to criticize excessiveness or the "legalistic moralistic" character of much of American foreign policy. In the current atmosphere of conservative triumphalism where the history of the Cold War is interpreted through the lens of an American "victory", Kennan punctures these reprehensible pretentions by pointing out that, "The suggestion that any American administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous political upheaval, in another great country on another side of the globe is intrinsically silly and childish" (all quotation are drawn from the Lukacs book).
   Amidst the theme and variations of post-war US policy toward the Soviet Union, apparently formed from reading Dr. Benjamin Spock on child-rearing, Kennan saw clearly and consistently that the Soviet Union was not a "fit ally or associate, actual or potential, for [the United States]", a pronouncement he made at the outset of WWII and which he repeated for many years after. Thus, détente, the "Evil Empire", and other variations of US policy had, despite the best efforts of neoconservative writers to lead us to believe otherwise, little impact on a Soviet Union that Kennan recognized early on had, by Stalin's time, fundamentally shifted course from Marxism-Leninism to despotism and lacked the resources or will to endure as a Communist state. Early evidence of this came in the post-war period as the USSR pulled back from Finland and Austria, and demonstrated its weakness through interventions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, among other actions.
   Kennan was equally sceptical of what is now called "global governance", including the formation of the United Nations; viewed the Yalta "Declaration of Liberated Europe" as "deplorable, [a] sham, and useless" (Lukacs's words) because Eastern Europe fell within Russia's sphere of influence; and was highly critical of the "American (and neo-Wilsonian) belief that a new international institution such as the United Nations was of paramount importance" (p. 65). He remained persuaded throughout his lifetime that "national and state interests were and would remain more powerful than any international organization dedicated to assure some kind of unchanging peace". Later, he opposed the expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe, referring to it as a disastrous mistake.
   At the same time, he saw a consistent thread running through the policies of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Bush, and Clinton, and continued in the current Bush presidency: a naive liberal interventionist mentality to secure questionable gains, usually at a high cost. It is useful to ponder Kennan's perspective when insisting too acutely on major differences in Democratic and Republican approaches to foreign policy, remembering that restraint, moderation, and measured analysis, all qualities that Kennan exemplified in his life as a practitioner and a historian, do not appear to be embedded in either party's approach to the world.
   As an undergraduate I read the first volume of Kennan's Memoirs in a summer course in diplomatic history, ably taught by Professor Clifford Egan at the University of Houston. Among hundreds of books read in college, the vividness of some of Kennan's prose continued to recur in my mind for years after, despite not having picked up the book since 1973. Lukacs insists throughout his study on Kennan's qualities as a writer as well as his brilliance as an historian and researcher, and Lukacs's own prose is the equal of Kennan's. His concentrated "character study" in fact points the way to further serious research for historians, though this research is not likely to be undertaken as waves of fads sweep through the profession, if not the practice of historical scholarship and writing, obviating the need to "do" history in favour of constructing frameworks and "theories" whose theoretical underpinnings are of the weakest sort.
   Kennan's life and work span the twentieth century, a remarkable life, yet leaving us with a legacy that must be accounted for and drawn upon if America is to achieve its promise. This is not likely to happen, of course, given the midgets who now propose to lead us. They possess the most detailed knowledge of the opinions of voters in each and every county across the country, now represented in a colouring book cartoon of America with red, purple, and blue, yet lack the slightest insight into foreign affairs, history, or the lives of other peoples far away, not to say any mastery of other languages or cultures. More distressingly, they are not unrepresentative of America at this moment in history, when many of the most civilized have put aside judgment in favour of passion, wisdom in favour of ideology. In so doing, our putative and potential leaders and their supporters have no claim upon our loyalties and deserve to be held to the high standard of accountability upon which Kennan insisted. As Kennan might have agreed, the foreign policy questions that are most vital and of most immediate moment are questions about America, not about our enemies and rivals.
   Even with Kennan's constant global travels, capacity for research (and his love of library culture, which he saw as one of America's distinctive contributions to civilization), and seemingly unlimited energy for writing, his lectures, speeches, and even a later role under Kennedy as ambassador to Yugoslavia, he maintained a small farm in Pennsylvania, and regularly sailed the Norwegian fjords around his family's summer home, indulging in his nostalgie du Nord, and his love of the Baltic area. Throughout his life he was accompanied and supported by his Norwegian wife, with whom he celebrated a 70th wedding anniversary before his own passing at the age of one hundred. Even in his 90s he continued to produce books, articles, and memoirs at an astounding rate, and received accolades and recognition that would not have been predicted upon his leaving government service in the 1950s. Yet neither Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, nor neoconservatives attempted to lay claim to him as one of their own, which speaks to the complexity of his intellect and the resistance of his thought to simplification.
   As Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, "The good fortune of America and its power place it under the most grievous temptations to self-adulation". Kennan's work and the exemplary nature of his life both bear close study, but there is no evidence that American leadership is any more prepared now than previously to learn the lessons offered by this distinctive patriot who often acted as Cassandra during America's most self-congratulatory and misguided episodes. Perhaps there will arise among us another such man who will exercise more influence over wise leaders, but I'm not holding my breath.



2. Lukacs styles the book as a study of character but I must say I do not feel I really know much more about Kennan after reading the book. The book is really too short to be of value. I would have liked to see more reflection on matters like the Long Telegram or the X article, but in Luckas treatment it all just glides by. There are very few excerpts from Kennan's writing. Instead there are many grand, sweeping statements about 'magisterial' books and various digressions that seem more about Lukacs than Kennan. At the end of the day that is my main objection. It is almost impossible to get past the pomposity of the writing; you feel stuck in the presence of an insufferable windbag. At one point, Lukacs refers to "The Wise Men" by Evan Thomas and Walter Isaacson as an "acceptable book". "Acceptable"? Doesn't that sound like your professor giving your essay a "B"? It is especially irritating when "The Wise Men" is so vastly superior to Lukacs' book in every way. A disapointment.



3. Lukacs' George Kennan is purpouted to be about the character of the man but rather serves as a very short biography of the man that ensured the defeat of the Soviet Union then any other American president. Many years after Keenan hammered out his containment philosophy, he remained convinced that the essential problem regarding Russia was not communism but instead was the paranoid nature of the Russian state. Look no farther then the so-called head of the Russian Republic now. Unlike, our current administration appointments, George Kennan was curious about the rest of the world and before he wrote anything down contemplated for every eventuality. That Lukacs knew Keenan is the ultimate flaw in the book, because there are several points where the author veers into untrammeled hagiography. But overall, a good introduction to Keenan and the tremendous impact he had on the world.



4. Lukacs views this as a study of a man's character, but it's really more of an overview of Kennan's life. It probably will have limited appeal to people who have read a lot of Kennan's work, particularly his books and collection. It is probably better for someone like me who is familiar with his famous work on "containment" and has read some of Kennan's more recent magazine pieces in the New Yorker and elsewhere. Kennan had a remarkable career that straddled academia and government and his mastery of Russian and German allowed him to get beyond the usual sources of information that fed Cold War debates. He was truly a man of the 20th century who was engaged in the world from the time shortly after WWI through the end of the Cold War.
   
   Lukacs provides the broad outlines of Kennan's life and what he felt to be Kennan's most important books. In that respect, he has written a biography that is likely to stimulate interest in Kennan's longer works, particular those from the middle Cold War era. Lukacs never really describes his relationship to Kennan, although it is clear that they were friends and collegial with respect to topics such as foreign affairs. It may be that this was written too close to Kennan's recent death to provide the distance necessary to fully consider another person's life.
   
   As a character study, the book falls somewhat short and misses obvious connections between experiences and points of view. There is a short description of Kennan's religious journey (from a Presbyterian upbringing to an vaguely described flirtation with Catholicisim and finally adoption of Episcopalianism) without recognizing the essential Calvinism in Kennan's lifelong world view. Kennan was clearly an enthusiast of bourgeois values, in the traditional sense and sympathetic to rather authoritarian, despotic government. He advocated a kind of government by "wise men" that certainly suggests a belief in "a predetermined elect". Ironically, he had the opportunity to see how policy by wise men could be undermined by broad political currents (the Truman years) or could bring about disastrous policies (the JFK years). Lukacs wonders how Kennan would have viewed this philosophy in light of our current government by "wise men" most of whom have come from the conservative "think tank" world, something that Kennan probably would have viewed as an a oxymoron. Kennan's view of the world comes off as lacking holism in important areas. While recognizing that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, even at a political/social level, Kennan seems to have minimized the dynamic nature of societies and the inevitable presence of internal and external forces which propel societies in new directions. Rather he is a humanist of the old school and conservative in the sense of being skeptical of "progress" and intervention. In many cases he proved prescient, as in Vietnam and the execution of the Cold War, but in others such as the rise of fascism, his cautious view of the world was inadequate.
   
   Kennan lived a remarkable life and was able to see a much of the world and play a part in US foreign policy at key points in our recent history. He was a true scholar and one unmoved by constraining or trendy paradigms. His status as an outsider and a public intellectual probably lessened his academic prestige, but his depth and insight make him someone worth revisiting and reading further. As a character study, this book has serious analytic shortcomings. As an affectionate brief biography, it works better and it should stimulate more interest in the life and work of this remarkable man.



5. I knew almost nothing about Kennan before I read this book, but Lukacs got me interested in learning more about Kennan and reading Kennan's books. This is by no means a balanced, objective, or scholarly work - Lukacs very obviously admires Kennan and makes no attempt to hide this. If you want a scholarly analysis of Kennan's life, work, or legacy, this book is not for you. But if you want to read a mostly well-written and interesting biography of a rather major American figure, I recommend it.

2 comments about Narrative of Sojourner Truth (Penguin Classics).

1. This book is an excellent biography. It goes a little further into the creases and crefices of the life of this great woman. I used it for a presentation in one of my doctoral courses and found it on a level that fit my needs.



2. I thought this book was written a little differently, but I also found it helpful. It was cool how Sojourner Truth's Book of Life was written inside of it along with a whole separate book. There was a lot of good information in it. I used this book for a school project and it worked out great. The book was useful and interesting to read because there are letters from people she knew that were written to her. I enjoyed reading this also recieved info from it.

2 comments about Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (Dover Thrift Editions).

1. This book addresses global issues, immigration policy, womens rights, civil rights, and the nature of European colonizaton of Africa. Du Bois connects the dots that tie the East St. Louis riots, the brutal treatment of african labor by european colonists, the low wages of domestic african american workers and women in america, and the shortage of european migration/workers because of the "great war". This is a first hand account of history by an African American that differs from past accounts of the above mentioned events in history texts, the movies, and the majority press.
   Darkwater is an easy read that educates. This is history not written as history by the author but as a comment on the events of his time that have significance to what is occuring in the world today.
   I found the book very enjoyable and enlightening. I witheld one star from the rating because the poetry, although good, seemed be tossed in as a filler.



2. Fondly called W.E.B., Dr William Edward Burghardt DuBois was a conscientious voice, whose mouthpiece was just a pen. Each of his writings buttressed this point.
   A bundle of intellect, all his works have remained potent till this day. Having enumerated the problems and experiences of emancipated slaves in "The Souls of Black Folk", Dr DuBois used this book, "Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil", to highlight the intricacies of the then White-Black relationships. This book has a socio-economic focus, and dealt with such associational issues like exploitative labour, voting rights, women's rights, and family values. It suggested guidance and remedies wherever necessary. The ideas and insights of Dr DuBois were general in perspective: both Whites and Blacks were thought of.
   This book is more than eighty years old; however, anybody who reads it, needs only to turn a few pages before discovering that we are still grappling with most of its lamentations.
   Finally, I must say that I cherished reading this book. "Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil" is a compelling piece; especially for anyone who is familiar with either "The Souls of Black Folk" or "Dusk of Dawn".

2 comments about Reagan's Disciple: George W. Bush's Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy.

1. Lou Cannon, author of several books about Ronald Reagan, has co-written "Reagan's Disciple", with his son Carl. A highly insightful, yet somewhat uneven book, it nonetheless makes some great comparisons between our nation's fortieth and forty-third presidents. Guess which one fares less well?
   
   The authors state in the preface that this is a book with "a fair and balanced point of view". In many respects it is, but it's hard not to notice (at least with the elder Cannon) a sense of awe regarding his subject. Granted, Reagan's star has been rising in past years and the Cannons take full measure of it. That legacy is still in dispute with many of us, but this offering certainly makes Bush look inadequate in contrast. If Reagan brought the Republican party into unanimity a generation ago, Bush has almost singlehandedly squandered it, as the authors point out.
   
   Much of "Reagan's Disciple" deals with war, beginning with a look at Woodrow Wilson's idealism, and subsequently how Reagan and Bush looked at war differently. Reagan, ever cautious about foreign entanglements, would almost certainly not have invaded Iraq as Bush did, much to everyone's chagrin today. The narrative of the Cannons is crisp but the subject matter tends to bounce around leaving a less than unifying story line. Yet the contrasting style of Reagan and Bush is the most fascinating part of the book and the authors tell this one well. While Reagan sought broad consensus and a balanced view, Bush has retained a small coterie of yes-men with hardly divergent views.
   
   As we reach the end of the tragic Bush years, "Reagan's Disciple" is a reminder of the bookends of the Republican domination since 1980. The "Morning in America" brand of Ronald Reagan has been wiped clean by the miasma of the past several years. As the authors rightly suggest, when Bush comes on tv people either change the channel or put on the mute button...Americans stopped listening to him a long time ago. People will invoke Reagan's name for years to come, but Bush's legacy, undoubtedly, will be something quite different.



2. Lou Cannon, journalist and historian, is one of Ronald Reagan's most prolific and reliable biographers (I think his "President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime" is still about the best bio yet written of our 40th president). Carl M. Cannon is a resourceful and clear-eyed reporter in the Washington of Bush 43. Together, they have produced an interesting book that gives us some valuable insights into the motivations and actions of the Bush presidency. It also, perhaps unexpectedly, shines a fascinating light on Ronald Reagan.
   
   For years -- before, during, and after his time in the Oval Office -- Ronald Reagan was portrayed by his opposition as a dim ideological cowboy. In recent years, however, he has been granted a Strange New Respect (as R.E. Tyrrell might put it) by the Left -- in part, no doubt, to try to seize a bit of his own still-strong popularity with the American people for their own purposes, but also to use as a cudgel with which to beat the newer, dimmer ideological cowboy, George W. Bush. To use the inevitable cliché -- so inevitable that even the Washington Post Book World review quoted on this page made use of it -- "George W. Bush, you're no Ronald Reagan."
   
   It's one of the many paradoxical features of today's political scene that it's now the Left who sees in Ronald Reagan a nuanced, deliberative statesman, while the Right (or at least the neocon, Bushian right) honors a one-dimensional, caricatured memory of who Reagan was and what he believed. One of the most valuable parts of "Reagan's Disciple," I thought, was the Cannons' portrayal of Reagan -- accurately, I believe -- as a leader far more practical, realistic, and conciliatory than ideological; far less willing to put American lives on the line or rely on military muscle than anyone thought; and far more willing to draw on a broad range of advisors and opinions than is his ostensible philosophical heir, President Bush.
   
   I found the most interesting parts of "Reagan's Disciple" to be the comparison of the two presidents' approach to warmaking. But the authors also discuss in some detail Supreme Court confirmation battles, the politics of White House personnel decisions, and what it means to be a "decisive" leader. There's also an interesting exploration of the validity of George W. Bush's current preferred presidential comparison, himself with Harry Truman: scorned and unpopular when he left office, but ultimately vindicated by history and honored in the memory of the American people. The Cannons find this comparison also ... imprecise.
   
   As this primary season has shown, Ronald Reagan is still a touchstone of Republican politics. As the Cannons and other historians have noted, if all the presidents since 1945 operated in the shadow of FDR, the presidents since 1989 have operated in the shadow of Ronald Reagan -- a shadow that seems likely to stretch, like a movie gunslinger's at sunset, for a considerable time yet. With George W. Bush having so explicitly claimed the Reaganite mantle, a book like "Reagan's Disciple" was both necessary and inevitable. That it was done so well, and by two writers so well-qualified to draw conclusions, is something to be thankful for. With so many books written about the Bush presidency, from so many different directions and viewpoints, how can you tell which ones are worth reading? Here's my helpful hint: this is one of the good ones.

5 comments about Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest.

1. Mr. Wilson many times starts with an interesting analysis that most of the time seems to lead to conclusions like: Obama is a genius, brilliant, selfless public servant and he wants to "...restore faith in Government and hope." And yet the author had the nerve to put on the inside flap of his book the following: "Amid all the hype, this book provides the first in-depth look at the controversies surrounding Obama's run for the presidency...". That is an audacious and false claim. I thought the piece on Tony Rezko read like a whitewash. Obama refuses to release the final settlement statement for the house. What is he covering up?
   But John Wilson did clear up a false impression I had about the "madrassa myth" that I keep hearing about in talking media. I thought that meant that Obama really had nothing to do with Islamic schools that it was something the right-wing smear groups made up. But I had been ignorant of the details. It turns out, according to the author's research: "Obama did often attend Friday prayers in the local mosque." ... Obama was officially registered as a Muslim and went to Koranic studies but at the same time he went to Catholic school. I should listen more closely! This is a qualified "myth" to the say the least. This, of course, does not prove that Obama is a secret anything - Muslim or Catholic. If he is anything different deep down from what he appears -- probably only Barack knows.
   I wanted to see the author skillfully cast a favorable light on Obama's association with Bill Ayers. I was disappointed I could not find the dangerous Bill Ayers in the book. If you don't want to buy this book and take the time to read it and can't accept my word that it is hype, just look at the eight photographs in the middle of the book. You might start to wonder if secret Obama campaign money has not flowed to the author?
   I would have awarded three stars if title had been something like: "Why I'd love to see Obama as President".



2. This blatantly positive profile of presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama presents the man, his positions and specific responses to the criticisms against him. Extensive direct quotes from the candidate himself plus 30 pages of footnotes buttress the book's powerful, if partisan, presentation. John K. Wilson, a former student of Obama's, omits some important things, however, it is only fair to note that some hot campaign topics (such as Reverend Wright) emerged after the book's publication. Wilson also makes a few odd comments (for instance, drawing a link between low black unemployment and the high incarceration rate under Bill Clinton). Still, he sets forth a compelling case for Obama and provides observations about the Senator's formative years, accomplishments and policies. He offers some good insights, for example, he discusses the role cynicism plays in politics and the role of white guilt. While Wilson sometimes gets carried away with his support of the candidate, he notes that both the far right and the far left have attacked Obama, so he must be doing something correctly. getAbstract recommends this to voters who want the story (albeit somewhat sunny) behind the candidate and to Obama supporters seeking more information about their presidential hopeful.



3. I am 68 years old and I have never been as excited about any politician since John F. Kennedy. This man has integrity . I really enjoyed reading this book. John K. Wilson kept my interest and curiosity.



4. How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation (Cultural Front)
   I know John Wilson, and he's written a powerful, relevant, moving book--one that he demonstrated a great deal of perspicacity in conceiving.
   
   That other reviewer is a political operative who has taken a pseudonym for the purpose of giving all Obama-related books a "one-star" rating and unjustified negative review!



5. "This Improbable Quest" is an appropriate title for this ill-fated book. The author has attempted to portray Barack Obama as a man with a vision, but has instead ultimately revealed all of Obama's vulnerabilities and weaknesses...ironically through the use of his own words. It is a shame that books like this exist. They are marketed at individuals too weak to see through the layers of hype...and they often eat the bait without even realizing it. This book has no relevance in today's world. As such, in a few months, absolutely no one will be the least bit interested in it.

5 comments about Confessions of a spy: the real story of aldrich ames.

1. This gives the best account of Ames' CIA career, particularly prior to the time he began to work for the Soviet Union, and corrects errors in several earlier books such as Wise's.



2. This is the only text I have read that provides a compelling and nuanced explanation of why Ames betrayed his country. The short answer is that he needed the money because he was living beyond his means. As a result of his work recruiting and handling spies he no longer believed it was wrong for a person to betray their country. Earley's well-written book explains how he arrived at that point. It also provides the reader with a credible look at what it is like to work for the CIA, and what it is like to work as a spy.



3. I was reading "See No Evil" by Robert Baer and he briefly mentioned Aldrich Ames and decided to read a book on him. While looking for books, I was pleasantly surprised to find one written by Pete Earley. I had read "The Hot House" a couple of years ago and found Earley to be a very clear and detailed writer. I really could not wait to receive the book. My expectations were high and they were met and exceeded. The book details Ames' life from birth, it details his parents, his entry into the CIA, and ultimately his betrayal of the country. The thing I love about Earley is that he leaves no loose ends. You're never left saying, "but what ever happened to..." or "I wonder who that is...". He's a very clear writer who introduces every subject in the book. He explains the facts sharply and thoroughly, and the pacing is perfect. Earley not only gives you the details, but draws you in with a story line that adds suspense. Earley is similar to other great non-fiction writers such as Stephen Ambrose, Jon Krakauer, Simon Winchester, Mark Bowden, or Kurt Eichenwald in that he takes a real event and tells it gripping way.
   
   On the negatives, there was not an index in my book which made it difficult at times. Also, Earley was not able to get interviews with everyone involved, in particular Ames' first wife, but at the time I'm sure not everyone wanted to participate with the media.
   
   The most important aspect of the book is that Aldrich Ames cooperated with Earley with face to face interviews while awaiting trial and later through letters. But Earley did not take everything Ames told him at face value, he is not lazy or sloppy, he fact checked and questioned everything. He even fact checked with Russian KGB which demonstrates how dedicated he was to the subject. Is it definitive? Definitely not because it came out so quickly after Ames arrest (before revelations of Robert Hanssen) but it is an excellent book.



4. Step by step we are moving to the truth.
   The fiction is banal. Hence - one star for the book. The reality is amazing. Hence - 5 stars for the next book on the Ames-Colby case. The next book will be based on Dekov's memoirs.



5. Ames was unduly lucky to have not been "netted" much sooner. Mr. Earley gives us a very well written piece of work.Ames was certainly not Kim Philby or 007;but He did get away with His betrayal for some years,and that alone makes it worthy for any 20th Century Historian. The little tidbit of a quite 'hot potato'betrayal story on Henry Kissenger is worth the cost of the book alone.Earley is also fair to Ames'American employers at CIA who finally pinch "the mole".

5 comments about Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million.

1. There are a number of good negative reviews already, with which I agree for the most part, especially the one that asks: Why was this written in the first place?
   
   The book attempts to stand on the shoulders of much more serious and lengthy works by Conquest, Pipes, Solzhenitsyn, Mandelstam and many others, and might serve as a good, well-written synopsis of their work, but Amis wanted to make it more pesonal than that and took up some very odd, rather remote contingent themes, such was why Soviet history is regarded with laughter, whereas Nazi history is not. Maybe this is more of a problem in Great Britain. I think we Americans are guilty of not knowing as much about Soviet atrocities as we should, but not of undue levity.
   
   Anyway, there is much for sensitive souls to consider in the story of Russia in the 20th century, some of it is hinted at and evoked here - that maybe there is such a thing as conscious evil in the world, for example. And I think that maybe Amis wanted to provide a picture that included both the horror of the millions of civilian murders inflicted in varying degrees of maliciousness and the intellectual (me, him) sitting in his chair reading about it. But if he did, it doesn't really come across, interesting as they might have been. I think it's a intriguing illusion we have that memorializing people whose lives have been unjustly tormented and cut short somehow influences the deceased favorably.
   
   The oddest thing are the juxtapositions of historical (and outrageous) fact with his personal activities, friendships, pre-occupations, which as I say, don't jell. Ingredients are poured together but they don't make anything.
   
   Another theme hinted at but not developed that interests me very much is that Stalin and his brothers in hatred are symptoms of our soulless, inwardly dead age, in the way that alcoholism is a symptom of inner imbalance in an individual. How does a person like Stalin come about? How does an individual gain power enough over other people to get them to murder? Most people can hardly get someone else to bring them a glass of water. What are the inner dynamics of someone who gets millions to murder other millions?
   
   So all in all, it was a disappointment, though it began well.



2. Amis applies his mastery of language to the soviet "experiment", recounting his own story of discovery.
   Horrific and brilliant



3. This book was my introduction to Soviet history when it came out (a role I suspect it played for many readers) and I thought highly of it at the time. The most memorable moment in the book, for me, was Amis's epiphany that even an achieved socialist utopia would be a kind of "hell." But rereading it recently, I didn't think it had aged well. Amis's tone is relentlessly sour, smug, and soggily self-important in the way that a certain type of Nabokov fan is (I like Nabokov, but his airy pomposity is insufferable in the hands of almost any imitator). I couldn't help but think that a more straightforward style would have suited his subject better. For that matter, the book could have been considerably shorter; as is, it's too long to be a good essay and too short to be a good history book. And despite his boast that he combed through "yards" of books on the Soviet Union to write the book, he makes countless errors. For instance, Lenin's brother is listed in the index as "Alexander Lenin." Did none of the yards of books Amis read tell him that Lenin's real name was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov? He also makes commonsensical errors that are downright comical: He devotes a paragraph to a sentence of Trotsky's which he finds to be appallingly phrased, apparently unaware that Trotsky didn't originally write that sentence in English.
   
   His utter refusal to cite even the simplest sources is also annoying; it's as if he thinks he's writing a "better" type of book than a simple history text. Perhaps he feared that citations would make it too obvious that he's basically ripped off every major historian in the field. His open letter to Christopher Hitchens (an incredibly embarrassing concept) lectures his Trotsky-worshiping friend in such condescending tones that I can almost imagine the letter's recipient cringing on his behalf.
   
   That said, the book is a decent, readable introduction to Stalin's Russia (Amis appears to know next to nothing of Russia prior to 1917), but this emphasis makes the book's thesis seem lopsided. Surely the majority of Western leftists don't need to be told that Stalin was a wicked tyrant. If Amis actually took his own thesis seriously, he'd devote his book to tearing apart Lenin and Trotsky. I couldn't help but think that Amis simply didn't have the intellectual stomach for this task - much easier to regurgitate large chunks of Solzhenitsyn and Conquest and smugly imply that Hitchens is some kind of apologist for the Gulag. At one point he implies that the February Revolution was the "real" revolution, but at another point he brusquely dismisses Kerensky as a fool. Most of his judgments seem filched from other historians. This isn't a bad place to start, but don't let this be the last book you read on the subject.



4. This is a depressing yet brilliantly written book that jumps in your face from page 1 as the brutal history of misery and suffering inflicted on the USSR by Stalin, Lenin and their company of Bolsheviks is laid before the reader. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn explores and describes the soviet system brilliantly in his Gulag Archipelago books, so too Amis explores deep into the psyche of a despotic, hopeless system of government and its deadly effect on the lives of the people it dictated to.
   
   One can only wonder at what kind of bitter, unlucky chance could come upon a people who enjoyed a brief period of inter revolutionary freedom after the overthrow of the imperial system, and with a large range of alternative parties to choose from, ended up with the despotic, psychotic Bolsheviks led by Lenin and co as top dogs at the pinnacle of the pack. Vasily Grossman's words as quoted page 251 is an excellent summation of what freedom is supposed to be. There are so many examples of countless lives destroyed physically, mentally and spiritually in this book that it hits you like a sledgehammer as you wonder thank god l was never born into this insanity. Yet at the beginning the system was built on lies, dictatorship of the proletariat meant dictatorship of all by a handful and if you did not like it then the Soviet govt would say stuff you, you are surplus and you can rot in a concentration camp or be dispatched physically.
   
   Amis maintains his white hot rage against the Bolsheviks, the USSR and of course Stalin for the whole book. The reputations of Lenin and Trotsky also sizzle like sausages on a barbeque on a hot summer's day in the Antipodes as Amis applies his blowtorch of a pen to their revolution and the system of repressive government they created which fell into Stalin's lap. As for Stalin himself, well Amis lays cudgel blows in all directions upon him and leaves no stone unturned in his description of the evil, misery and suffering he created and inflicted upon the Soviet Union. Essentially the book is about Stalin, and Amis is able to capture the evil essence of the man in his personal and public life and lay it all before the reader.



5. British novelist Martin Amis ponders the question, `why is it that one never laughs about Hitler's Holocaust which claimed the lives of 11 million, while members of the left are able to laugh about Stalin's rule, which claimed the lives of over 20 million?' This is an examination of the socio-historical-political facets that underlie Soviet style communism, and seeks to provide explanation for its broad support among the European intellectual elite of the 1950's, including Amis' father Kingsley. It is also a fairly rigorous, though often unoriginal forensic portrait of Stalin's particular breed of tyranny, which Amis attributes both to his insanity as well as the totalitarian nature of the Marxist-Leninist system which he inherited.
   
   This book might be though of as a letter to those of the old left such as Christopher Hitchens, who continue to derive a fair amount of laughter and enjoyment for their past follies. Amis breaks from his historiography in these moments, and he imposes his own anti-communism on Hitchens' work; he contrives dicey judgments such as,
   
   "although I always liked Christopher's journalism, there seemed to me to be something wrong with it, something faintly but pervasively self-defeating: the sense that the truth could be postponed. This flaw disappeared in 1989, and his prose made immense gains in burnish and authority. I used to attribute the change to the death of Christopher's father, late in 1988, and to subsequent convulsions in his life. It had little or nothing to do with that, I now see. It had to do with the collapse of Communism" (pg. 47).
   
   This is painting with a broad brush; one could easily make the case that Hitchens' journalistic authority diminished after his stance on Iraq in 2003. Still, Amis does a competent job of presenting the facts to the members of the hard left such as Hitchens, who have always taken a flippant tone in evaluating the USSR.
   
   Amis' historical work is fine, though it is generally unvaried and unoriginal; he relies mostly on Alexander Solzhenitsyn's standard historical accounts in the Gulag Archipelago Volumes, which are more than competent and standard. There are also some interesting looks at the correspondence between Nabokov and Edmund Wilson during this period. However, Amis' occasionally bizarre political oversimplifications, i.e. "[a]s in Germany, this was the birth of mass-media propaganda; people were unaware, then, that propaganda was propaganda-and propaganda worked" (pg. 213). Such declarations are less then insightful, and fail to provide adequate explanations as to Stalin's popularity. Koba the Dread is still a fairly competent evaluation of Stalin's life and politics, and it provides a fair and brief overview of the Soviet Union for readers who desire a quick blow-by-blow, even if it is derivative of Solzhenitsyn.