Khrushchev: The Man and His Era - Rilegato

Taubman, William

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0743231651 ISBN 13: 9780743231657

Casa editrice: Free Press, 2003

Riassunto

A magisterial, definitive and compelling assessment of one of the giants of twentieth-century history: former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. William Taubman's brilliant biography of one of the key figures of the Soviet Union is a study in contrasts -- how the boy from a peasant background rose to the heights of power; how a single-minded, ambitious political player survived twenty years under Stalin; how he opened up to the West after Stalin's death and yet brought the world close to oblivion in the Cuban Missile Crisis. What emerges is a fascinating picture of a man constantly torn between benevolence and malevolence -- a man who made himself cultured and yet who could never really escape his image as a bullying country bumpkin (most famously demonstrated by his interruption of Macmillan's speech to the UN in 1960 by banging his shoe on the table -- the urbane Macmillan responded, 'Mr President, perhaps we could have a translation, I could not quite follow'). William Taubman has previously edited collections of Nikita Khrushchev's speeches and reminiscences and is completely immersed in this subject -- his biography is likely to remain the standard work for years to come.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

‘Outstanding, superbly gripping and surely definitive’
Daily Telegraph
‘Extraordinary’
Sunday Times
‘Unlikely to be surpassed any time soon either in richness or complexity . . . [A] monumental biography’
New York Times
‘Masterful and monumental . . . A wonderful achievement’
Washington Post
‘Masterly . . . A remarkable portrait’
Sunday Telegraph
‘A veritable Volga of a book’
New Yorker
‘A very good book - it is a piece of literary craftsmanship as well as scholarship’
Literary Review
‘A masterpiece of scholarship, investigation and narrative’
Los Angeles Times
‘A monumental book . . . A masterpiece’
Spectator
‘Splendid’
Time
"A tremendous biography . . . There have been many good biographies of Khrushchev [but] there is no fair comparison to be made . . . The range of [Taubman's] research, his mastery of sources and his ability to win the confidence of most -- not quite all -- of the people he tracked down are astounding. As a result, Taubman will make many readers -- especially those who have not kept up with the torrent of revelations from the opened Soviet archives in the last ten years -- change their understanding of history" Neal Ascherson, LRB
'Highly readable' Charlotte Hobson, DAILY TELEGRAPH
Krushchev by William Taubaum
'exceptionally well-researched book...by far the best and most thorough contribution to understanding Krushchev's personality and politics ever written',
GUARDIAN WEEKEND 13/12
'A superb biograhy of the wily Russian leader. Khrushchev was a career antagonist with a tough, prize-fighter's face, and Taubman creates a teeming, James Ellroy-like canvas of political schemings, executions, corruption but, also, triumphantly, perestroika in the making'
Ian Thompson, Independent on Sunday's Books of the Year
'A superb biography of the wily Russian leader. Khrushchev was a career antagonist with a tough, prize-fighter's face, and Taubman creates a teeming, James Ellroy-like canvas of political scheming, executions, corruption but, also, triumphantly, perestroika in the making'
Independent on Sunday, Books of the Year - Ian Thomson
'The best general work of Russian history this year, using archives, his own interviews and synthesis of published works, was William Taubman's masterful, fascinating and sensitive biography KHRUSHCHEV: THE MAN AND HIS ERA...Taubman delivers a political and biographical tour de force, something approaching a definitive work'
Simon Sebag Montefiore, FINANCIAL TIMES
‘William Taubman tells his [Krushchev’s] story with insight, wit and a gentle puzzled affection’
Telegraph 11/06
'Taubman has produced an utterly convincing picture of the contradictory Khrushchev, from his peasant origins and meteoric rise, through purges, politburo plotting, brave de-Stalinisation and the erratic, blustering, bull-in-a-china-shop style that eventually alienated his colleagues and took the world to the brink of Armageddon over Cuba'
SUNDAY TIMES

L'autore:

William Taubman is the Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. In addition to having spent fifteen years researching this volume, Taubman is the author of STALIN'S AMERICAN POLICY (1982) and MOSCOW SPRING (1989).

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Free Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0743231651
• ISBN 13: 9780743231657
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 896