Stalin: The Man and His Era [Paperback]

Adam B. Ulam (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 080707005X | ISBN-13: 978-0807070055 | Publication Date: December 1, 1987

With a new Introduction by the Author

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Josef Stalin, writes historian Adam B. Ulam in his now-classic biography, was the consummate outsider, a man who spoke Russian with a Georgian accent all his life yet still proclaimed himself to be the supreme father of the Russian people. Often pictured as a semiliterate boor, Stalin was in fact an intellectual, and he destroyed the intellectual class to which he belonged "as thoroughly as any class in history had ever been destroyed." Ulam's account of the 20th century's Genghis Khan is an absorbing study of power won and terrifyingly applied.

Review

'The portrait of Stalin that Ulam gives in this mammoth and altogether splendid volume...is particularly effective in explaining the background and development of such extraordinary phenomena as the adoption of terror as a technique of government.' - Newsweek 'Ulam's now-classic account of the 20th century's 'Genghis Khan' is an absorbing study of power won and terrifyingly applied.' - Amazon.com 'Adam Ulam was not only one of our greatest historians of the 20th Century; he also lived through its calamities and catastrophes.' -Harvey Cox, Thomas Professor of Divinity at Harvard --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 760 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (December 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080707005X
• ISBN-13: 978-0807070055
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,619,830 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written, September 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Stalin: The Man and His Era (Paperback)

This is quite simply a masterful book. Ulam gives the impression of having read, pondered, and put in context everything ever written in any language by and about Stalin, the other Bolsheviks, and their close contemporaries in the USSR and Europe. And yet he is anything but tedious. He is as fine a writer as any historian around -- lucid, incisive, authoritative, serious and yet with a very witty, very dry irony. His tone is ideally suited for writing about historical figures, especially such grotesque ones as Stalin and his cohorts.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thought Provoking., April 28, 2000

By 

Yuli Martov - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stalin: The Man and His Era (Paperback)

Certainly, any rational thinking American is completely flabbergasted by the atrocities Stalin commited in the very long twenty-four years he reigned in the Soviet Union. And naturally any thinking person would want to know why a person would commit these atrocities.

Ulam's excellent biography puts into perspective how a seemingly under-educated person such as Stalin could fill the void left by a giant of a person like Lenin. The part of the book that is most insightful is the chapters describing the power stuggle that took place "after" V.I. Lenin's death. You really start to understand how a gifted author and orator such as Leon Trotsky lost the battle for Lenin's mantle to Stalin. A person can even begin to sypathize for Stalin, but then the author describes what happened after Stalin became the maximum leader of the USSR in 1929. Of course everyone knows what happened after 1929, collectivization, purges, show trials of Bukharin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev, and the assasination of Leon Trotsky. Ulam's book is quite lengthy, but it is well worth the read, I would recommend this book to anyone.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dense but good, June 18, 2009

By 

Thomas R. Breen (BROOKLYN, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stalin: The Man and His Era (Paperback)

I agree with a previous review that this book is so dense that it must be read in short intervals, but it was an extremely good learning experience. It never ceases to amaze me how a society can put so much faith in a supreme leader and never rise up against atrocities. Stalin was certainly a monster but I never fully appreciated how good a diplomat he was and how he capitalized on Russia's sacrafices to shape the map post World War 2 and the enabling role both the U.S. and U.K. played in this. My one complaint with the book is that it spends too much time on intraparty struggles and politics that gets a little boring at points and becomes repetetive. All in all a good read, but don't bring it to the beach!