Book Description
Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much controversy as the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky's extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on revolutionary conscience, yet there was a danger that his name would disappear from history. Originally published in 1954, Deutscher's magisterial three-volume biography was the first major publication to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine. In this definitive biography Trotsky emerges in his real stature, as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution.
Customer Reviews:
a sweeping, penetrating masterpiece.......2006-08-08
This last of 3 volumes in Deutscher's biography caps an astonishing and captivating historiographical achievement. Deutscher weaves together character study, drama, and historical narrative to give an authoritative account of Trotsky's tragic final years, as the great leader waged a rearguard ideological struggle in the face of an avalanche of Stalinist harassment, slander, repression and murder. Simultaneously, Deutscher lays bare the blunders and disasters of the Communist International under Stalin's leadership, making clear how inexorably these failures followed from Stalin's deadened bureaucratic-centralist socialism.
Deutscher's deft handling of the facts, personalities, ideas, and situations of the time is simply unparallelled, and makes for a tremendously enjoyable and informative read. His account of Trotsky's last hours left me in awed tears.
Essential material for anyone exploring the question of where socialism went wrong in the 20th century.
DEFEATED,BUT UNBOWED .......2006-08-02
THIS YEAR MARKS THE 66TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF LEON TROTSKY-ONE OF HISTORY'S GREAT REVOLUTIONARIES. IT IS THEREFORE FITTING TO REVIEW THE THREE VOLUME WORK OF HIS DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHER, THE PROPHET ARMED, THE PROPHET UNARMED, THE OUTCAST.
Isaac Deutscher's three-volume biography of the great Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky although written over one half century ago remains the standard biography of the man. Although this writer disagrees , as I believe that Trotsky himself would have, about the appropriateness of the title of prophet and its underlying premise that a tragic hero had fallen defeated in a worthy cause, the vast sum of work produced and researched makes up for those basically literary differences. Deutscher, himself, became in the end an adversary of Trotsky's politics around his differing interpretation of the historic role of Stalinism and the fate of the Fourth International but he makes those differences clear and in general they does not mar the work. I do not believe even with the eventual full opening of all the old Soviet-era files any future biographer will dramatically increase our knowledge about Trotsky and his revolutionary struggles. Moreover, as I have mentioned elsewhere in other reviews while he has not been historically fully vindicated he is in no need of any certificate of revolutionary good conduct.
At the beginning of the 21st century when the validity of socialist political programs as tools for change is in apparent decline or disregarded as utopian it may be hard to imagine the spirit that drove Trotsky to dedicate his whole life to the fight for a socialist society. However, at the beginning of the 20th century he represented only the one of the most consistent and audacious of a revolutionary generation of mainly Eastern Europeans and Russians who set out to change the history of the 20th century. It was as if the best and brightest of that generation were afraid, for better or worse, not to take part in the political struggles that would shape the modern world. As Trotsky noted elsewhere this element was missing, with the exceptions of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and precious few others, in the Western labor movement. Deutscher using Trotsky's own experiences tells the story of the creation of this revolutionary cadre with care and generally proper proportions. Here are some highlights militant leftists should think about.
On the face of it Trotsky's personal profile does not stand out as that of a born revolutionary. Born of a hard working, eventually prosperous Jewish farming family in the Ukraine (of all places) there is something anomalous about his eventual political occupation. Always a vociferous reader, good writer and top student under other circumstances he would have found easy success, as others did, in the bourgeois academy, if not in Russia then in Western Europe. But there is the rub; it was the intolerable and personally repellant political and cultural conditions of Czarist Russia in the late 19th century that eventually drove Trotsky to the revolutionary movement- first as a `ragtag' populist and then to his life long dedication to orthodox Marxism. As noted above, a glance at the biographies of Eastern European revolutionary leaders such as Lenin, Martov, Christian Rakovsky, Bukharin and others shows that Trotsky was hardly alone in his anger at the status quo. And the determination to something about it.
For those who argue, as many did in the New Left in the 1960's, that the most oppressed are the most revolutionary the lives of the Russian and Eastern European revolutionaries provide a cautionary note. The most oppressed, those most in need of the benefits of socialist revolution, are mainly wrapped up in the sheer struggle for survival and do not enter the political arena until late, if at all. Even a quick glance at the biographies of the secondary leadership of various revolutionary movements, actual revolutionary workers who formed the links to the working class , generally show skilled or semi-skilled workers striving to better themselves rather than the most downtrodden lumpenproletarian elements. The sailors of Kronstadt and the Putilov workers in Saint Petersburg come to mind. The point is that `the wild boys and girls' of the street do not lead revolutions; they simply do not have the staying power. On this point, militants can also take Trotsky's biography as a case study of what it takes to stay the course in the difficult struggle to create a new social order. While the Russian revolutionary movement, like the later New Left mentioned above, had more than its share of dropouts, especially after the failure of the 1905 revolution, it is notably how many stayed with the movement under much more difficult circumstances than we ever faced. For better or worst, and I think for the better, that is how revolutions are made.
Once Trotsky made the transition to Marxism he became embroiled in the struggles to create a unity Russian Social Democratic Party, a party of the whole class, or at least a party representing the historic interests of that class. This led him to participate in the famous Bolshevik/Menshevik struggle in 1903 which defined what the party would be, its program, its methods of work and who would qualify for membership. The shorthand for this fight can be stated as the battle between the `hards' (Bolsheviks, who stood for a party of professional revolutionaries) and the `softs' (Mensheviks, who stood for a looser conception of party membership) although those terms do not do full justice to these fights. Strangely, given his later attitudes, Trotsky stood with the `softs', the Mensheviks, in the initial fight in 1903. Although Trotsky almost immediately afterward broke from that faction I do not believe that his position in the 1903 fight contradicted the impulses he exhibited throughout his career- personally `libertarian', for lack of a better word , and politically hard in the clutch.
Even a cursory glance at most of Trotsky's career indicates that it was not spent in organizational in-fighting, or at least not successfully. Trotsky stands out as the consummate free-lancer. More than one biographer has noted this condition, including his definitive biographer Isaac Deutscher. Let me make a couple of points to take the edge of this characterization though. In that 1903 fight mentioned above Trotsky did fight against Economism (the tendency to only fight over trade union issues and not fight overtly political struggles against the Czarist regime) and he did fight against Bundism (the tendency for one group, in this case the Jewish workers, to set the political agenda for that particular group). Moreover, he most certainly favored a centralized organization. These were the key issues at that time. Furthermore, the controversial organizational question did not preclude the very strong notion that a `big tent' unitary party was necessary. The `big tent' German Social Democratic model held very strong sway among the Russian revolutionaries for a long time, including Lenin's Bolsheviks. The long and short of it was that Trotsky was not an organization man, per se. He knew how to organize revolutions, armies, Internationals, economies and so on when he needed to but on a day to day basis no. Thus, to compare or contrast him to Lenin and his very different successes is unfair. Both have an honorable place in the revolutionary movement; it is just a different place.
When Trotsky proved himself right. .......2005-12-06
This is perhaps the most "weak" part of the "Prophet" trilogy, in that Deutscher thought Trotsky's opposition to Stalin was, at the time it happened, useless, as Stalinism was the necessary mechanism of modernization that made a future fully-fledeged socialist society possible. Now, amid the smouldring ruins of Stalinism and with the former Soviet bloc reduced to a sorry parody of compradore capitalism of the Latin American style, one can be certain that, in the long run, Trotsky was right, after all, but then Deutscher puts his case so throughly that one can see precisely in what he was wrong and therefore how Trotsky managed to make so outstanding and unexpected a prevision as the final demise of Stalinism. Only that makes this book a necessary reading.
The Passion of Leon Trotsky.......2005-03-29
The last ten years of Trotaky's life was one of exile and assassination, an account worthy of the death of Jesus and Socrates. Mme Trotsky even remarked that her husband when mortally wounded look like Jesus taken down from the cross in an El Greco.
It remains to me still incomprehensible that so many Communists and supporters of Communism did not come to Trotsky's defense and aid, allowing that thug Stalin to persecute him, to destroy his followers in morale and in life, and finally to send an assassin to finish him off. Granted that Trotsky's position against Stalin and in favor of the Soviet Union was perhaps too sophisticated for most Communists to rally to, he was after all still the greatest Communist figure after Lenin and perhaps even including Lenin.
Trotsky would of course have been horrified to learn of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but had he led the Soviet Union after Lenin much might have been different and better for all concerned. He certainly was more right than Stalin about Hitler, about China, and about the dangers of extremist collectivization and industrialization, even though collectivization of agriculture and rapid industrialization were program he had initially advanced against the hesitations of Stalin.
In the end Bolshevism has in Trotsky its hero and prophet which nothing can really take away.
This reprint series, others have correctly noted, is marked by numerous typos and other errors.
Brian Wayne Wells, Esquire, reviews "The Prophet Outcast".......1998-05-12
This is the final volume of Isaac Deutscher's famous three-volume biography of Leon Trotsky, the great Russian revolutionary. Deutscher's biography is the standard biography of Trotsky by which all other biographies of Trosky are measured.
Picking up the life of Trotsky from the time of his first exile from the Soviet Union in 1929, this book carries the story of the later portion of Trotsky's life all the way to his murder in Mexico in 1940.
Deutscher's writing is enticing and holds the interest of the reader. The book is also wonderfully indexed and serves as a guide to the voluminous writing of Leon Trosky during the last phase of his life.
Average customer rating:
- Disappointing Version of a Very INteresting Life
- A well researched book !
- Well...
- Fascinating reading
- Wonderful
|
Ludwig II of Bavaria: The Swan King
Christopher McIntosh
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Historical
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Royalty
| Leaders & Notable People
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
General
| World
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Germany
| Europe
| History
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 1860643140 |
Customer Reviews:
Disappointing Version of a Very INteresting Life.......2000-10-12
THIS VERSION IS DISAPPOINTING. TEDIOUSLY DULL. LUDWIG II WAS ONE OTHE THE MOST COMPLEX AND INTERESTING KINGS OF HIS DAY. THIS BOOK TELLS VERY LITTLE OF THE PERSONAL OR PUBLIC LIFE OF THE KING. YES, HE WAS MAD AS A HATTER, OR SHOULD IT BE CRAZY LIKE A FOX. HE WAS A HARMLESS HOMOSEXUAL THAT LOVED BEAUTY. HE WAS AN ADEQUATE, IF UNINSPIRED KING TO HIS PEOPLE UNTIL THE LAST. IN EARLIER HISTORY, HE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN TREATED SO BADLY. THIS RENDITION IS MISSING SO MUCH OF THE MAN. IT ISN'T EVEN HALF THE STORY.
A well researched book !.......2000-05-09
In March of this year (2000), I was in Bavaria and visited the castles of Ludwig II. Upon my return I purchased this book to learn more about the King. I found this book fascinating. I only wish I had read it before my trip to his castles so I could have appreciated my visit more.
Well..........2000-04-23
The problem I find with this book is it focuses on trying to explain rumors by twisting facts into ficton-a problem I found when reading many Evita bios. I feel there definitely needs to be a better bio written for the market. The book on the whole was interesting for me as a first time reader of LudwigII.
However, the author tends to overlook important issues ie.I was really disappointed when we are told Ludwig toured the western region of Bavaria, but instead of finding out about what he did on the tour(in reflecting his FACTUAL actions),we are drawn back to what Wagner was doing and his importance in Lud's life.
Good for first time read but I have read better.
Fascinating reading.......1999-07-07
A great in-depth look at the life of Ludwig II. McIntosh includes many excerpts from letters and historical documents, and never draws a conclusion without abundant proof to back it up. This book is not just for history buffs--anyone who enjoys a good story should read McIntosh's take on Ludwig's life.
Wonderful.......1999-06-23
This book, which was wonderfully researched, provides a detailed information about this magnificent king. It is preferred that persons who read it know a little about the Swan King, but it is not necessary. He discusses Ludwig's intimate life, including controversial topics. One might enjoy this book for many reasons, especially if you have an interest of how court life was around the late 1800's, and how Ludwig's mind worked, his thoughts, feelings, etc. A definate buy!
Book Description
A revealing and detailed biography of one of the most enigmatic figures of the nineteenth century Refreshingly accessible and thoroughly researched, this biography captures as never before the story of Ludwig II of Bolivia. Ludwig is best remembered for his patronage of Wagner and for the fantasy-like palaces he created. The Swan King presents new conclusions on the more uncertain aspects of Ludwig II's life including his homosexuality, his supposed madness, and the mystery of his death.
Customer Reviews:
The Swan King: Lugwig II of Bavaria.......2007-05-25
The book is a result of extensive research so it's packed with information and, unlike many histories, this one reads like a novel. I not only learned what Ludwig contributed to Bavaria, but felt I knew him as a person.It's a well-written book on a fascinating topic. I plan to go to Munich Germany next year to see Ludwig's castles firsthand. My only complaint about this is with the publisher. The print is so small, older people, over 55, may have a problem reading it.
Book Description
Terrors of the Table is an absorbing account of the struggle to find the necessary ingredients of a healthy diet, and the fads and quackery that have always waylaid the unwary and the foolish when it comes to the matter of food and health. Walter Gratzer tells the tale of nutrition's heroes, heroines and charlatans with characteristic crispness and verve. We find an array of colourful personalities, from the distinguished but quarrelsome Liebig, to the enterprising Lydia Pinkham. But we also find the slow recognition that the lack of vital ingredients can cause terrible illnesses - scurvy, rickets, beriberi. These diseases stalked the poor in the West even into the 20th century, and scandalously remain in poorer parts of the world today. The narrative stretches from classical times to the modern day and gives a valuable historical perspective to our current understanding. It also highlights some of the problems faced by the developed world regarding health today - in particular diabetes and obesity. And despite our far greater understanding of what our body needs, there are still many who would fall for fads and fancy diets - some dangerous, others just daft. Of course, the story of nutrition does not end there. We have discovered the key vitamins and minerals our body needs, but research continues on the connections between diet, health and disease. The body's biochemistry is complex, and there are no easy answers, no magic formula, that applies to all individuals. The safest and most rational course would seem to be a sensible, moderate, and varied diet, not forgetting that 'a little of what you fancy does you good'.
Customer Reviews:
Entertaining and appalling history of malnutrition .......2007-03-27
This book tells a fascinating story of man's stumbling search for proper nutrition. One would think that the knowledge of a healthful diet would not be so difficult to achieve by God's most intelligent creature, but the absence good analytic methods and measurements as well as philosophical, political factors and the power of entrenched authorities, had a woeful effect.
Even when physical sciences were quite well developed, the biological sciences lagged way behind. This is probably due to the complexity of biological systems, leading to much idle speculation, opinion and authoritarian doctrine and dogma. Then when true scientific advances were achieved, quacks and charlatans quickly moved in, attracting hordes of the gullible as they continue to do today.
This book details the history of malnutrition, not just in the general sense, but the exposes the specific miseries caused by each of the many individual deficiencies to which humans are subject. The fact is that humans are not like plants and bacteria that can live on simple substances. This is provided by a varied diet. Due to economic and particularly cultural reasons specific nutrients have been lacking, giving rise to mysterious and horrible ailments. The recognition of the cause, prevention and treatment of these was not completed until the mid 20th century. Even now the optimal diet is not settled. Toxic and alleged beneficial effects of food substances are still being discovered along with new marketing and quack dietary schemes, new ones of which are promoted daily.
This book tells this story but in a rather choppy manner with sometimes boring and sometimes fascinating digressions consisting of mini-biographies of numerous pioneers in the field of nutrition and the physical sciences.
The book is marred by a surprising number of errors of fact. For instance Arthur Hassall
is erroneously said to have had bodies in the thyroid named after him. Hassall's corpuscles are actually located in the thymus. He implies that "Waterloo Teeth" were implanted in the gums when they were actually used to construct dentures. He states that many animals are subject to scurvy when it is only presenting a few such as humans, guinea pigs and monkeys. Polar bear liver toxicity is erroneously and repeatedly attributed to vitamin D rather than vitamin A. Tuna liver is erroneously called a superior source of vitamin D than cod liver oil. Who knows how many of the other eye popping facts he brings to the reader's attention are off kilter?
Still I don't know of a better book about this subject so I recommend buying it.
Interesting, but flawed........2006-06-04
For the most part, I enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the romp through the history of biochemistry/physiology/nutrition. I learned a lot of meaningless facts to impress people with at cocktail parties.
I found the last chapters to be a little tedious. At this point the author's own opinions creep into what has previously been a pretty unbiased presentation. I think, though, that Gratzer provides the nail in his own coffin. He spends many chapters elucidating how the 'experts' are sometimes proven right, sometimes proven wrong, and sometimes quacks or downright criminals. If we didn't know everything 100 years ago, we probably don't know everything now, either, so the pronouncements of the 'experts' of 2006 should be taken with a grain of salt (and a dash of lime juice, to prevent scurvy).
Nutrition, Complete With Nuts.......2005-11-01
There are some New-Age types designated "Breatharians" who claim they don't have to eat. Perhaps they just get by on the air they breathe, or on sunbeams. Breatharians are unlikely to be willing to be scientifically tested for this ability. I don't know of any analogous group that says they are also free from drinking water, or from breathing oxygen, but for the rest of us, taking in a bit of daily nutrition is a habit we cannot break. Since eating is something that has been on the mind of members of our species ever since we had minds, it is something we ought to know plenty of facts about, and we do. Facts in scientific style, however, have only come with difficulty over the past couple of centuries, and along with them have come a lot of fads and foolishness. All are topics within _Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition_ (Oxford University Press) by Walter Gratzer. The author is a biophysicist and an emeritus professor at Kings College, London, who values the way we have come to some scientific understanding of nutrition, but he also enjoys telling about human folly, and it seems that eating is so essential to us that both are on generous display in this exhaustive historical survey.
Nutritional theorizing began, like everything, with the ancient Greeks. Hippocrates stressed moderation of intake and the need for exercise. Galen took up Hippocrates's theory of the bodily humors in the second century CE, and enlarged upon it, and his unquestioned (and often unwise) teaching lasted for centuries. The eventual understanding of how vitamins are essential to health forms many chapters of this book. There is a surprising adherence to a pattern of understanding for each vitamin. Doctors would have spotted a particular disease condition, but were reluctant to accept that it was due to a nutritional deficiency, explaining it instead as an infection or an intake of toxins. Different experts at diverse times would come to some understanding about what foods would clear up the problem, but the inertial resistance to change would condemn sufferers to illness for years, while authorities in the rearguard criticized (sometimes with acid vituperation) what turned out to be healthful suggestions. We groped our way toward a nutritional understanding of what was good for us, but there has never been any lack of self-appointed experts to tell us. For some reason, the United States has been the region from which the most durable food fads have sprung, with famous names like Graham, Kellogg, and Post all implicated in the silliness. The most amusing crackpot was Horace Fletcher who at the turn of the 20th century proposed that all ills could be banished by chewing food thoroughly. Just chew every bite 32 times (one for each tooth), ordered the Great Masticator, a man who had an imposing stage presence and was an accomplished liar about his qualifications. Chewing parties became a fashion among some diners, with a conductor who counted and timed the bites and authorized the swallows.
Gratzer finishes this amusing and scary survey with a chapter on current nutritional trends. It might be titled "If you're so smart, why ain't you healthy?" We know plenty about nutrition by now, we know what levels of fat, carbohydrate, proteins, minerals, and vitamins anyone ought to take in, and still we are eating badly. He reviews the questionable and complicated data that have to do with, for instance, fiber and salt intake, and finds that public understanding of such issues (fiber good, salt bad) may have little correlation with actual health results. Worry over cholesterol levels has produced millions of dollars worth of benefit for pharmaceutical companies, but beneficial effects on general health have been far harder to find. There are common additives now of which no one really knows the long-term effects, but nothing quite as yucky as the adulterants used in the past, like the snails put into watered milk to make it frothy. We eat badly, we are gaining weight, and diabetes rates are going up. Gratzer's advice: diets full of synthetic and processed foods promote hypertension and obesity. Fresh fruit and vegetables are good for you. And always: "That it is prudent to avoid excess of any type of food seems now to be the clearest message." It's been a couple of thousand years with lots of scientific experiments and papers, but Hippocrates would have agreed.
Average customer rating:
|
Carbon, Nitrogen, and Sulfur Pollutants and Their Determination in Air and Water
Greyson
Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Biology
| Biological Sciences
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
Environmental Science
| Earth Sciences
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Environmental
| Civil
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
Air
| Pollution
| Environmental
| Civil
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Pollution
| Environmental
| Civil
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
Applied Atmospheric Sciences
| Special Topics
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
Environmental Science
| Earth Sciences
| Professional Science
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
Conservation
| Environment
| Outdoors & Nature
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Conservation
| Outdoors & Nature
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0824782356 |
Book Description
For chemists and engineers in ecology, food science, pollution control, and related fields. Details the procedures available for monitoring and controlling carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen pollutants in such industries as waste water treatment, energy, transportation, pharmaceuticals, and mining. Outlin
Books:
- The Real Rain Man: Kim Peek
- The Roots of Endurance: Invincible Perseverance in the Lives of John Newton, Charles Simeon, and William Wilberforce (Swans Are Not Silent)
- The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal
- The Secret Man: An American Warrior's Uncensored Story
- The Sisters: Babe Mortimer Paley, Betsy Roosevelt Whitney, Minnie Astor Fosburgh : The Lives and Times of the Fabulous Cushing Sisters
- The Sparkling-Eyed Boy: A Memoir of Love, Grown Up
- The Sundance Kid: A Biography of Robert Redford
- The Terrible Hours : The Man Behind the Greatest Submarine Rescue in History
- The Unforgettable Maharajas: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography (Roli Books)
- The Wall (Guitar Tab)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894
- Next Stop Grand Centr
- On Mystic Lake
- Once Burned
- How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking
- Investing in the Great Uranium Bull Market
- Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror
- An Artist's Book of Inspiration: A Collection of Thoughts on Art, Artists, Creativity
- Guide to Florida Pier and Bridge Fishing
- The vascular plants of Louisiana: An annotated checklist and bibliography of the vascular plants rep
The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-1929
The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921
The Revolution Betrayed
Literature And Revolution
History of the Russian Revolution
