Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
An analytic review of a book Robert D Kaplan calls, "“A riveting, immensely detailed biography of Putin that explains in full-bodied, almost Shakespearian fashion why he acts the way he does.”
Comments
Here is the link which disappeared from preview.
by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 08/22/2016 - 1:37pm
Look, Lulu - you keep linking to stupid uneducated shit, I'm going to keep pummelling you. You call that a tight trigger, I call it just rewards.
Putin was born in 1952 - his 4-year-old memory would by dominant Russia owning East Europe and occupying Hungary, not Dreams of his Father in WWII. By 8 years old, Russia was putting Gagarin and Lajka in space. Putin wasn't sympathetic towards us in 9/11 - In 1999 he'd set himself up like a good KGB agent/oligarchist to ascend to the presidency as Yeltsin melted down, and he sure wasn't going to waste a good American crisis where we needed his help in Afghanistan. I don't know where thisguy gets off analyzing Russians, but I'd bet he never drank a bottle of vodka with one. Pathetic.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 08/22/2016 - 2:22pm
The the bio of the author I linked to is at the site. Following are some other stupid shit opinions of Meyers who authored the book. At the bottom is Meyers bio.
“Steven Lee Myers’s The New Tsar is not the first biography of Putin, but it is the strongest to date. Judicious and comprehensive, it pulls back the veil… from one of the world’s most secretive leaders. What is most striking, given the aura of steely consistency that Putin cultivates, is how he has changed over the years…. The great strength of Myers’s book is the way it shows how chance events and Putin’s own degeneration gradually cleared the path to the Ukraine crisis… Putin emerges as neither a KGB automaton, nor the embodiment of Russian historical traditions, nor an innocent victim of Western provocations and NATO’s hubris, but rather as a flawed individual who made his own choices at crucial moments and thereby shaped history.”
—Daniel Treisman, The Washington Post
“What Steven Lee Myers gets so right in The New Tsar, his comprehensive new biography — the most informative and extensive so far in English — is that at bottom Putin simply feels that he’s the last one standing between order and chaos… What Myers offers is the portrait of a man swinging from crisis to crisis with one goal: projecting strength… A knowledgeable and thorough biography… Putin himself now represents the chaos he so abhors — the chaos that will surely come in his wake.”
—Gal Beckerman, The New York Times Book Review
"Steven Lee Myers coherently, comprehensively, and evenhandedly tells the story not only of Putin’s glory years, but also of his hardscrabble childhood in Leningrad, his checkered academic career, his undistinguished work as a KGB agent in East Germany, his remarkably loyal service to the mayor of post-Soviet St. Petersburg, and his reluctant but speedy climb through President Yeltin’s ministries in the late 1990s."
— Bob Blaisdell, The Christian Science Monitor
“Combining skilled story telling, psychological examination and political investigation, Steven Lee Myers succeeds brilliantly in this biography of Vladimir Putin. Explaining the dangers that Putin’s Russia may and does pose, Myers effortlessly and expertly guides the reader through the complexities of the Russian Byzantine governing style and the country’s politics and identity. In the end, the book provides one of the most comprehensive answers to a puzzling question: Despite all the changes that Russia has gone through during communism and post-communism, why is it still an empire of the tsar?”
—Nina Khrushcheva
“Such an understanding of Putin’s early life and the evolution of his leadership is lacking. [Myers’s] methodology is sound and, I believe, the only way to capture such an intimate understanding of Russia’s iron man.”
—Ian Bremmer, author of Superpower
“Personalities determine history as much as geography, and there is no personality who has had such a pivotal effect on 21st century Europe as much as Vladimir Putin. The New Tsar is a riveting, immensely detailed biography of Putin that explains in full-bodied, almost Shakespearean fashion why he acts the way he does.”
–Robert D. Kaplan
“The reptilian, poker-faced former KGB agent, now Russian president seemingly for life, earns a fair, engaging treatment in the hands of New York Times journalist Myers… [who] clearly knows his material and primary subject… Putin used the perks of power to create a complex system of cronyism and nepotism. Myers shows how Putin convinced everyone that this way of operating was part of the Russian soul and how he perpetuated it through an archaic form of Russian corruption… Myers astutely notes how Putin’s speeches increasingly harkened back to the worst period of the Cold War era’s dictates by Soviet strongmen… A highly effective portrait of a frighteningly powerful autocrat.”
–Kirkus (starred review)
“What could be more timely and relevant than a new, thorough biography of Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, from a writer who was The New York Times correspondent in Moscow for seven years of the Russian chief's reign?... Russia has lived through numerous prime ministers, a stock market crash, a debt default, moments of paralysis, wrenching warfare in Chechnya, brutal murders and good and crooked elections, all recounted succinctly by Mr. Myers… Putin's and Russia's relations with the United States are dealt with candidly.”
—Dan Simpson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
And where do you get off suggesting he knows nothing about his subject when you obviously know jack shit, if that much, about him and his work history. Pathetic indeed.
About the Author
STEVEN LEE MYERS has worked at The New York Times for twenty-six years, seven of them in Russia during the period when Putin consolidated his power. He spent two years as bureau chief in Baghdad, covering the winding down of the American war in Iraq, and now covers national security issues. He lives in Washington, D.C. This is his first book.
See all Editorial Reviews
by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 08/22/2016 - 2:40pm
You linked to JE Pepper reviewing Myers. From the other reviews, it's entirely possible Pepper largely missed the point, and Myers himself might be insightful - it doesn't come through feom this review.
And I still doubt Pepper ever drank vodka with Russians.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 08/22/2016 - 4:08pm
Pepper writes well enough that I am willing to bet he knows how to read too. There is evidence that he is neither stupid nor uneducated. And, it is apparent that he actually did read the book before he commented on it but maybe he made up the entire blog after only reading Meyer's title. That too, though I doubt it to be the case, is entirely possible. If he hadn't read the book his review would be, as you say, "stupid uneducated shit" and there is a lot of that kind of shit going around. I know, I see it fairly often myself.
by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 08/22/2016 - 6:06pm
Okay, should be "stupid educated shit", with his conclusions based less on what he read than what he imagines or wishes to be.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 08/23/2016 - 2:39am