This is a beautifully done book with exceptional illustrations. It has a magical feel to it that really will intrigue the child as well as the adult. It is perfect for girl or boy readers because of its classic fairy tale storyline. Loved it, and so did my son!

Tales of Ivan Belkin is the breaking point in Pushkin's creative work. It's the border between Sentimentalist literature and Realistic one. The characters are much deeper than they could be looked for the first time! Tales of Ivan Belkin are something about a JOKE OF GENIUS, don't you see that? They all are about things that were important for the author in this horrible autumn, 1830, when they were written. These things are family, friendship, and love. Each tale is full of love, don't you think so?

I want to know where in his writings does he treat fairly extensively the "acquiring of a second skin" as a result of being absorbed into the Gulag? I have found a very brief reference in the glossary of my old paperback translation from the early eighties. I know in years past that I read a more extensive treatment of this topic, but scanning of all his major works except August 1914 (which I have not read) and Cancer Ward (which I have read, but the local library does not have a copy) has not turned up this reference. Please someone help in this matter!

What a fun book! The author tells of his life as a serf in the Imperial Russia of the early 19th Century. Admittedly, his was not the life of a typical serf--he was well educated, eventually being emancipated by his "owner" (and the description of this process is in itself fascinating). The great part of this book is in the details--the descriptions of the people, places, and interactions of his childhood; the reader cannot help sympathizing with his poor father who tries over and over again to make the best of his situation, yet is trapped by his social standing. This work is a great addition to the current understanding of life in Russia during the period.

Clear and compelling indictment of the most inhuman social system devised by humans. This account of the Soviet Union's history illustrates the danger of a one party system and the inhumanity of big government.

I returned to this slim volume following the Sept. 11 attacks. While America is now said to be fighting "terrorism," few have pointed out the similarities between terrorism and our old foe communism. Reading Solzhenitsyn is at once alarming and comforting. In reading these words, now a quarter of a century old, it is not at all a stretch to apply them to our present situation. He writes: "I would like to call upon America to be more careful with its trust to prevent those pundits who are attempting to establish fine degrees of justice and even finer legal shades of equality (some because of their distorted outlook, others because of short-sightedness, still others out of self-interest)to prevent them from using the struggle for peace and social justice to lead you down a false road. They are trying to weaken you; they are trying to disarm your strong and magnificent country in the face of this fearful threat -- one which has never before been seen in the history or the world. Not only in the history of the country, but in the history of the world." This treatise had a monumental effect on me when I was in college, helping to shape much of my politics. Going back and re-reading it, I find that its content is as powerful and as applicable as ever. To boot, Solzhenitsyn writes with a sense of urgency that is uniquely Russian -- he is similar to Dostoevsky in that way -- and, like Dostoevsky, for having been in the Gulag, his words ring powerfully, indeed. A wonderful companion volume to this would be his Nobel lecture (he won the Nobel for literature in 1970), where in speaking about writing and art, he says, "One word of truth outweighs the world." In short, he is one of the most important thinkers/writers of the century. It is disheartening that these speeches are out of print.

Solzhenitsyn at his crazy best. An all-out attack on both the Soviet Union and the American youth of the 1970's, this more or less accurately reflects the real Solzhenitsyn: A self-centered angry man who attempts to take the sins of the world upon himself. Is this simply hubris, or the act of a boddhisattva in the making? You decide.

In One Hell of a Gamble, Fursenko and Naftali cut to the heart of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the surrounding politics. Due to the end of the Cold War, they were able to obtain many first-hand accounts of the superpower rivalry from the participants themselves. Using this newfound knowledge, they craft a timeless account of the behind-the-scenes politics that formed the backbone of US-Soviet relations during the Kennedy era. A chilling perspective is offered on how close the world really came to nuclear annihilation in the fall of 1962. Congrats to Fursenko and Naftali for producing a gripping work that I highly recommend to all students of the Cold War or politics in general.

Naftali and Fursenko have done a fascinating job in this tremendously engrossing book about the prelude, climax, and aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A complete revelation of the personalites of the three players, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro is compelling and informative. The reader will walk away with a new found appreciation for the back-channel diplomacy utilized at the height of the crisis, Overall, just a fine scholarly work, a must for all interested in international relations.

Reviewed by Nigel Clive in International Relations, Volume XIV, No 1, April 1998

Aleksandr Fursenko is Chairman of the History Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Timothy Naftali is a Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale University. Their book, based on unprecedented research into Russian archives and exhaustive unearthing of official American documents, provides the most authoritative account of superpower brinkmanship before and during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which at its height was arguably the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. Their analysis explains how and why by 1960 the Cuban issue had come to define the superpower conflict as forcefully as the future of West Berlin or nuclear testing. Rightly, the story begins with what has often been forgotten: the popularity of Fidel Castro and his triumphant visit to America in April 1959, less than four months after over-throwing the Cuban dictator Batista. Castro's primary objective was to decrease American leverage over Cuban affairs, while the Kremlin was planning a covert operation to assist the Cuban army at the request of Fidel's brother, Raul Castro, who was a secret member of the Cuban Communist Party, a fact then unknown to Fidel. The opening of KGB and Presidium documents shows that Moscow was ready to do more for Castro than Castro felt it prudent to accept, given his domestic struggle for legitimacy. By March 1960, however, the explosion of a Belgian arms shipment in Havana harbour convinced Castro of the need for overt Soviet assistance to deter American intervention. By July 1960, Cuba had moved into the Soviet camp when Khrushchev gave a Soviet commitment to defend Cuba. From January 1961 Khrushchev identified his leadership of the communist world and the prestige of the Soviet Union with the health of Cuba and Castro.
Cuba was an immediate priority for John Kennedy in December 1960. On 12 April 1961, he assured the world that America did not intend to invade Cuba. This book gives a detailed description of the bungled Bay of Pigs operation later in April, which was largely caused by the failure to understand how essential air superiority would be to the success of the entire operation. Thereafter, Moscow took a commanding role in the Cuban security service. The choice of communism had been made by Raul in the early 1950s, by Che Guevara in 1957 and by Fidel in 1959. Now a proper police state had been set up at an eight-minute flight away from Miami. After the Bay of Pigs, the link between the Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the GRU (Military Intelligence) representative, Georgi Bolshakov, gave the Kremlin the best look inside the thinking of the Kennedy administration that any intelligence service could hope for. Notably, the KGB file on the younger Kennedy showed him to be more anti-Soviet than his brother. Cuban security intelligence, improved by the KGB, thwarted CIA and central American attempts to assassinate Fidel, Raul and Che Guevara in the summer of 1961. This prompted Castro in September 1961 to ask for increased Soviet military assistance. Moscow could see how the situation was heating up when John Kennedy made contact with Khrushchev's son-in-law and slyly compared his problem in Cuba with what Khrushchev had faced in Hungary before 1956. Kennedy wanted the problem to be solved without an American invasion, but his wish was opposed by the CIA..
In May 1962, Khrushchev discussed with his closest advisers in the Presidium the plan to put medium-range missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba. Although seriously criticized by Alexseev, the KGB representative in Cuba, the Presidium approved the missile proposal, which Khrushchev explained had the dual objective of demonstrating to Castro that the Soviet Union would defend his revolution, while reminding Washington of Soviet power. Castro interpreted the Soviet plan as a gesture to improve the position of the socialist camp in the international arena, not as a desperate ploy to prevent an American attack. In July 1962, the Kremlin used the Bolshakov link to warn against the use of American reconnaissance planes to photograph the cargoes on the ships making their way to Cuba. Before the end of the summer of 1962, Khrushchev instructed Bolshakov to explain to Robert Kennedy that the Soviet Union was placing defensive weapons in Cuba. He now took the line that the Soviet Union and America were equally strong, and in September 1962 he authorized the sending of six atomic bombs while emphasizing his control over their use. This meant that by the end of September 1962 Khrushchev and Kennedy were much closer to military action that they had ever wanted to be.
On 2 October 1962, Kennedy ordered the armed services to start preparing for military operations against Cuba. Three days later, Bolshakov claimed to Robert Kennedy that the weapons being sent to Cuba were defensive. In fact, he was not informed of the truth. Bolshakov lived to see the end of the Cold War, but he never got over his bitterness at having been used to deceive the Kennedys. On 16 October, a U-2 spotted two nuclear missiles and six missile transports south west of Havana. But on 20 October, from a divided Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ex Comm) the blockade group carried the day against those favouring an air strike. This was reflected in Kennedy's quarantine Radio/TV address on 22 October, while Robert Kennedy assured Khrushchev via Bolshakov that America had excellent evidence of the missile deployments. So by 25 October, Khrushchev decided to dismantle the missiles, conceding that a head-to-head struggle in the nuclear era could only bring devastation to the Soviet Union. His letter of 26 October to Kennedy was a climb down. The following day Moscow was informed from Havana that Cuba expected an American air strike in the immediate future. But Khrushchev stood apart from most of the Presidium in believing that America would not attack Cuba and he did not want to threaten nuclear war when it might actually lead to one. A negotiated settlement was now within reach, as Back Channel diplomacy seemed to have succeeded.
But Castro was furious that Moscow had cut a deal without consulting Havana, as Mikoyan soon learned at the start of his visit when no common ground could be found between the two. Indeed, by 16 November, Khrushchev was prepared to pull the plug on Soviet assistance. On 20 November, Kennedy announced that Moscow had agreed to withdraw their II/28 bombers within thirty days and in response America would lift its blockade. On Christmas day 1962, a Soviet ship quietly left Havana with the last of the tactical warheads. Khrushchev's anger with Castro subsided in January 1963 as he sent him a 27-page letter, which received mixed reviews in Cuba. However, in March 1963 Castro agreed to visit the Soviet Union where he stayed for a month and had several meetings with Khrushchev discussing Soviet policy in Algeria, Angola and Albania. Khrushchev also authorized military support for Cuba and renewed the nuclear guarantee that he had first made in the summer of 1960. In June 1963, Kennedy looked forward in his ground-breaking American University speech to an early agreement on a comprehensive test-ban treaty. The 'Hot Line' was also established. The Cuban missile crisis had passed into history; but Castro still loomed in the background as a potential obstacle to the achievements of the new Kennedy/Khrushchev relationship.
NIGEL CLIVE

I had the opportunity of corresponding and meeting John Toland when I was a teenager and he was a remarkable man and a great writer. This is by far the best and most readable biography ever written on Hitler. Toland eschews, thankfully, the ridiculous psycho-babble which ruins many other major Hitler biographies.

Toland interviewed over 300 people close to Hitler: Tradul Junge, his secretary, Max Wunsche and Richard Schultze, his adjutants, Eva Braun's best friend and many others. He went to the source and his oral interviews constitute a tremendous historical resource.

Toland shows that Hitler was sexually normal, which is important since Hitler's supposed "deviant sexuality" is the lynchpin of many inferior books.

If you are to read one book about Adolf Hitler, make it this one. Nothing better has come down the pike in the 25 years since this books publication. For anyone interested in the history of the 20th century and World War II, this is a must read.

Ever wonder what made Adolf Hitler one of this century's most reviled, yet powerful political leaders? Ever wonder what drove Hitler to his incessant desire to rid the world of Jews and all people of the "non-Aryan" race?

Well, if these questions continually vex you, you ought to read John Toland's splendid and provocative biography on Adolf Hitler. It is well-written, and very thorough, as it chronicles Hitler as a young boy growing up in Austria, to the founding of the Nazi party, and culminating with Hitler's ascension and command of the Third Reich. Toland provides probing insight into the forces (both in his personal life and the external political environment in Germany) which drove Hitler to relentless anti-Semitism, and the reasons for his obsession to rid the world of Jews.

He also delves into Hitler's troubled personal life, detailing his close relationship with his mother, and his somewhat ambiguous relationship with his wife, Eva Braun.

But Toland also describes other elements of Hitler's life which were more positive, such as the construction of the autobahnen (auto routes) for military transport, and the founding of the Volkswagen (the People's Car). While these are rather prominent cultural icons in today's society, who would attribute them to a man as hated and reviled as Hitler?

For anyone interested in obtaining a "complete" and "objective" picture of Adolf Hitler as a man who achieved great power and influence in one of the most economically advanced countries in the world, and not just a chronicling of his anti-Semitic actions (which should not be minimized), then I would strongly recommend John Toland's fascinating biography,"Adolf Hitler."

This book has to be one of the longest biographies ever written about a historical figure, but it is greatly the worth the effort expended to read it. John Toland is as good a historian as one will ever experience in the modern era. His books, to a one, are eminently readable. There is no historian who has the ability to make his subjects appear so lifelike, even to those who lived long after the events he writes about. By taking actual quotes and putting them into proper context, Toland marinates a genre long known for its aridity. Hitler the man was as complex a person on the political stage as any that preceded him, or have followed. Toland wades through Hitler's many complexities and seeming contradictions, and sheds light on what drove the Fuhrer's madness and his need to bring Europe (and later the world) to the brink of destruction. Toland offers plausibility to what drove Hitler to vilify and massacre the Jewish race in Europe, his goals of conquest, and his political system...areas in which historians have argued about for generations. We learn many things about Hitler's childhood and early adulthood, things which may shed some light on the future dictator's raison d'etre. From a disappointing childhood to dreams of being an artist and architect in Vienna, Austria, to his service in the German army during World War I, Hitler's dreams of a Germanic empire are mapped out every stage of the way. Toland's treatment of Hitler is fair, which is deeply hard to do, as the leader of Germany's Third Reich has caused much misery and destruction to people all over the world. His detachment makes Hitler appear much more scarier. It is hard to envision a man who would hold so true to his demonic visions over a span of twenty years, as Hitler did with his blueprint for domination of Europe and the Soviet Union. If you love twentieth-century history, particularly that of World War II, this book will satisfy your craving...and then some! I highly recommend all of Toland's books relating to the World War II era, particularly "The Last 100 Days" and "Infamy," which is about the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan on the U.S. on December 7, 1941, and the apparent subsequent cover-up by the government of its foreknowledge of the attack. Toland has also written a couple of fictional books that are not quite as good, but worth a look-see.

One day...is that all it was? Even reading the novel, you feel the exact sameness of the days, how they all blend together in a Soviet workcamp, and how it had to be difficult to keep track of how many days have passed.

This book had a profound impact on me. These types of books make me look at myself a little differently. They make me wonder just how I define what's important in my life, and they make me awe at how easy it would be to redefine "important." For Ivan, what's important is an extra bowl of food, dry gloves, and a little tobacco. But we know, when we read this, that it wasn't what was always important--once upon a time, he had a life.
Simply by becoming a prisoner of war, he's become an enemy of the State; and a prisoner of a much larger war (Stalin's war on his people).

This book is about more than Stalin and more than a workcamp. It's about much more than a day in the life of a single prisoner. It's about humanity, about questioning who we are and what it would take to make us radically different, and yes, about communism and another world.

Read it yourself--and find out.

_Ivan Denisovich_ is by no means light reading, nor is it particularly notable for its entertainment value. Solzhenitsyn's detailed descriptions of the horrors of life in the Gulag, though, give the reader a glimpse into an otherwise unknown life, a life filled with desperation, starvation, frozen tundra, and injustice. Although I did not particularly enjoy the book as I read it, I am glad that I did--Solzhenitsyn's story is worth being heard, and the novel's ultimate value surpassed my initially negative feelings about the book. It is truly amazing and thought-provoking to realize what sort of a day is good in the eyes of Ivan Denisovich and his fellow prisoners.

One Day is based on the real life experience of A. Solzhenitsyn, who was imprisoned for the better part of ten years (may have been more, can't remember) in a Russian hard labor camp. One of the ironies of this is that A.S. was not an outspoken dissident or a rabble rouser, he mostly held to the party line, or didn't give much thought to politics. He was imprisoned for an offhand comment after years of loyalty. After finally being released, and writing this novel, the book was banned in Russia and he was eventually forced into exile from his beloved/hated mother country. He went on to win the Nobel Prize for this and his subsequent works about Russia during his lifetime.

The character Ivan mirrors A.S. in some respects, most notably in the fact that he doesn't care at all about any of the ideology behind the camp. Some of the other characters debate politics or sociology and mostly get thrown into solitary confinement. But not Ivan. He thinks about food and how he's going to get more of it. He thinks about keeping his foot wrappings dry and leaves the political proselytizing to the fools who will soon be dead.

Ironically, this is where the book finds its true literary achievement. At the heart of this character is a total disillusion, not the smallest spark of hope or faith in ideals or humanity, and yet the experience of watching this character carefully manuever his way to an extra bowl of soup, a pinch of fresh tobbacco, an old crust of bread -- it's magical somehow. The scene of the prisoners laying bricks is practically transcendental. Here there is dignity, pride, a sense of accomplishment, community, even a small amount of pleasure. Did we forget we were reading about a communist forced labor camp? Yes, for a moment, we did.

There's a powerful statement about the nature of a human being in that. This is A.S.'s achievement, the puzzling complexity of this book -- it is precisely out of his hopelessness and disillusion that Ivan Denisovich's humanity and strength arise.

You can still feel the author's conflicted sorrow, the unquenched bitterness and the utter frustration with a communist system that was completely irrational and blindly destructive. Yet the source of that frustration is the love he had for his country that nearly destroyed him. This confusion and melding of opposite poles is only appropriate for literature about Soviet communism -- a system based on such high utopian ideals, yet responsible for some of civilization's most massive atrocities.

All in all a quick read and honestly not as depressing as it may sound. An incredible novel as well as an incredible piece of literary history. Besides, when was the last time you got off so easy reading a Nobel Prize winner?

PS. I happened to pick up All Quiet On the Western Front at the same time as this book. They turned out to be quite similar in a number of ways. If you like one of these books, you will certainly like the other. Both fascinating and oddly beautiful accounts of the misuse of the population by those in power.