testament revolution penkovskiy khrushchev

books:

3 reviews
Edward Crankshaw

Atheneum Books, 1986

The Great Eighteenth Century Conservative
Maria Theresa is known to some as the empress who hired police to round up prostitutes for "correction" and conducted a nonstop war on vice and excess. True it is that she was a staunch conservative, but she was also a great political survivor. She negotiated two potentially disastrous wars, the War of the Austrian Succession (in which Vienna, and the entire Habsburg Empire almost fell) and the ...

The Penkovskiy papers

1 review
Oleg Vladimirovich Pen'kovskii, Frank Gibney, ...

Interesting Story, Tragic Ending
Interesting background story about the Soviet spy Colonel Oleg Penkovskiy. Too bad the Soviets found out that he turned on them. Includes KGB information about how a Soviet spy should blend in while living America.

Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament [ILLUSTRATED]

1 review
Nikita Khrushchev

Little Brown & Company, 1974

An interesting read
As a child growing up during the Cold War who as a child participated in air-raid drills in grade-school, my memories of Khrushchev were formed by flickering images on a black and white TV where this plump little man banged his shoe on the podium and cried out: We will bury you! It was frightening. As children, we would sing this ditty to the tune of Whistle While You Work: Whistle while you ...

The Fall of the House of Habsburg

4 reviews
Edward Crankshaw

Penguin (Non-Classics), 1983

B.Wells, Esquire, reviews The Fall of the House of Habsburg
This is a marvelous little history of one of the great royal dynasties of Eurpoe which came to an end with the First World War. Proof of the universal appeal of this book and Crankshaw's writing style lies in the fact that this reviewer has read the book at three different times in his life (once as an undergraduate, another time at the conclusion of law school and yet another time about a ...

The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution, 1825-1917

6 reviews
Edward Crankshaw

Da Capo Press, 2000

Superb!
This is an outstanding choice for anyone who wants to learn more about and understand the forces involved in Russia's autocratic Tsarist political system from 1825 to the Revolution of 1917. The author masterfully blends history, political thought, biography, (and a dry sense of humor at times!) to a monumental task in examining the changes in Russia in the last 100 or so years prior to the ...

Khrushchev Remembers

2 reviews
Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev

Little Brown & Company, 1970

Amazing Insight
This book, dictated by Nikita Khrushchev while under virtual house arrest from the time he lost power until his death, offers a rare look into the Soviet mind at the height of the Cold War. It was translated to English from the Russian by Strobe Talbott, who has been Deputy Secretary of State since 1994. Shortly after publication, Khrushchev officially said that he did not write it. ...

A Russian Gentleman (The World's Classics)

4 reviews
Sergei Aksakov

Oxford University Press, USA, 1982

Accessible, entertaining Russian classic
Those who think the "Russian classics" are huge books should take a look at this very enjoyable book, a combination of fiction and memoir. The shift from the "heroic" age of the Russian patriarch to the domestic and more feminine world of his successors is interesting. Dostoevsky is urban; try this as one of the depictions of the Russian countryside. A keeper.

Bismarck

5 reviews
Edward Crankshaw

Penguin (Non-Classics), 1983

Furor Teutonicus: Bismarck Redesigns Europe
Edward Crankshaw shows in this magnificent biography the complicated twists and turns of Bismarck's virtuoso political genius that was brought to bear on the reconfiguration of Germany. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815 `unscrambled' Napoleonic Europe and the social revolutions of 1848 were countered by reaction, Bismarck emerged as a champion of reactionary Europe in Germany; or so it ...