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Bottom of the pile
6
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
7/100Critics
6/100Scholars
Author:
Geoffrey Roberts
Publisher:
Yale University Press
Date:
February 8, 2022
Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, this book explores all aspects of Stalin's tumultuous life and politics.
What The Reviewers Say
A person’s library can tell us only so much. Mr. Roberts underscores the limitations of book collections and marginalia in illuminating his subject’s mind.
A truly fascinating study that leaves no doubt that Stalin took ideas as seriously as political power itself.
Stalin kept no diary and wrote no memoirs, so these scribblings in the margins become invested with greater significance than perhaps they deserve. Roberts warns against reading too much into Stalin’s decision to underline a line attributed to Genghis Khan.
A new perspective on the dictator.
