Stalin, Paul Johnson
Stalin, Paul Johnson
2 Rating(s)
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Stalin
The Kremlin Mountaineer

Author: Paul Johnson

Series: Icons

Narrator: Paul Johnson

Unabridged: 2 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download (DRM Protected)

Published: 03/25/2014

Synopsis

Paul Johnson, the most celebrated popular historian of our time, takes a scalpel to Stalin, whom he considers “one of the outstanding monsters of history.” Johnson sets forth the essence of Stalin’s life, character, and career. “It has been a hateful task, which has caused me much pain and disgust,” he writes with characteristic candor. “But it has been a duty I have performed not without a certain grim satisfaction.” Stalin poses a particular challenge to a biographer: How does one render such a monster human? While Johnson doesn’t flinch from chronicling Stalin’s rise to absolute power—the remorseless vendetta against Leon Trotsky, the development of the Gulag, the extermination of millions of peasants—he also shows Stalin playing billiards, listening to his adored Mozart, and annotating Marx’s Capital in the margins. It is, in concise form, the story of Russia in the twentieth century: dark and murderous, a stage on which to display humanity’s infinite capacity for self-destruction.

About Paul Johnson

Beginning with Modern Times (1985), Paul Johnson’s books are acknowledged masterpieces of historical analysis. He is a regular columnist for Forbes and The Spectator, and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Paolo on March 03, 2017

Just thought that this book would be more profound and less shallow.......more

Goodreads review by Howard on October 11, 2023

Short, concise review of the life of Stalin. This is at least the third biography I have read by Johnson (Churchill and Socrates) but I have not read any of his extended works. This series (Icons) provides a nice collection of brief biographies written by interesting authors. Another in this series......more

Goodreads review by Noah on May 25, 2018

If you go into Stalin: The Kremlin Mountaineer expecting a full length biography, well, you're bound to be disappointed. But if you read this with the knowledge that it's not really a book at all, it's more of just a longish essay, you'll find a lot to like about it. This is a short, well written, a......more

Goodreads review by Pete on April 09, 2019

Stalin : The Kremlin Mountaineer (2014) by Paul Johnson is a remarkably short, but remarkably punchy biography of Joseph Stalin. Paul Johnson manages to create quite a picture in few pages of how Stalin operated and the way the Russian Communist government operated.  The book starts with Stalin's you......more

Goodreads review by Blossom on April 07, 2023

Well, that was...interesting. I really enjoy (appreciate?) Paul Johnson but this read like a list of facts and figures with some quotes thrown in. It was not the best I've read by Johnson. However, it was a simple introduction to Stalin. I 'know' more about him that I did before, and some that I was......more

Quotes

“Vivid…[full of] unexpected insights…A fine ‘Stalin for Beginners.’” —The Wall Street Journal

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