Kruschev: The Man and His Era
William Taubman
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Kruschev: The Man and His Era
William Taubman
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
This volume, with its brisk, enjoyable narrative, succeeds in every sense: sweep, depth, liveliness, color, tempo. Each chapter shines with mastery and authority. A conscientious biography of a worthy subject cannot help being a portrait of the times, and Taubman's book fully lives up to the ''and his era'' of the subtitle. It is a multifaceted study of the key political and economic forces of the first 47 years -- almost two-thirds of the total -- of the Soviet civilization.
Taubman's book is by far the best and most thorough contribution to understanding Khrushchev's personality and politics ever written, but he is not always as sure-footed in discussing more recent political phenomena.
The great achievement of Taubman's book is to offer a psychological portrait of Khrushchev, at once highly critical and deeply sympathetic, that captures this mixture. No other work has brought home so vividly just how extraordinary a figure Khrushchev was in the gallery of modern rulers.
...the biography by William Taubman, a Russian specialist at Amherst College, is the first scholarly study of this Soviet leader based on a thorough examination of all the existing literature as well as the available archival sources and interviews with those who knew him. More than 10 years in the making, this lively narrative is likely to remain for a considerable time the standard study of the man who in 1956 started the de-Stalinization that 35 years later ended in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of its empire..
...[a] tremendous biography.
William Taubman’s monumental, long-awaited biography of Nikita Khrushchev is the most important book on Khrushchev to appear in English since the deposed Soviet leader’s own memoirs in 1970. It is rich in analysis and factual detail, shedding new light both on Khrushchev’s life and on the Soviet state.
Few have written a political biography that better captures both a historic figure and the history of which he was a part. Taubman's towering work is stunning not only for its scale and diligence -- every aspect checked and cross-checked, no source neglected -- but for the skill with which he reconstructs what is essentially a history of Soviet politics during a key phase.
Taubman has done a masterful job of reminding us not only how complex a man Khrushchev was, but also how much blood he had on his hands, and what a wild ride it was in international relations while he was in power.
Amherst College political science professor Taubman's thorough and nuanced account is the first full-length American biography of Khrushchev—and will likely be the definitive one for a long time.