Post #396,890
12/5/14 2:17:53 PM
12/5/14 3:26:50 PM
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"Stalin" by Stephen Kotkin
The reviews had caught my interest, and a well-known online retailer offered another 30% off the substantially discounted price of the $40 retail figure. Interestingly, I ordered the title at about 3:00 pm last Saturday, and it arrived 21 hours later: the well-known online retailer has apparently contracted with the USPS to deliver their swag on Sundays.
This is volume one of a projected three, and takes its subject only up to 1928. Kotkin does not admire Stalin, but he respects his subject as a gifted, intelligent, rational character (most of the received wisdom, greatly influenced by Trotsky's account, depict him as a dim thug who unaccountably prevailed by means of a low animal cunning). I'm presently in the middle of the account, and Stalin himself has actually all-but vanished for many of the past 150 pages (the main text is something north of seven hundred) as the chaos and contingency attending early Bolshevik rule is described. It's astonishing that the Reds ever took power: every contending party and faction appears to have been equally inept, but only the Bolshies had Lenin with his incredible Terminator-like singleness of purpose.
This bio is extraordinarily readable, although you should be prepared to get into the historical weeds for long stretches. We'll be obliged to wait until 2016 for volume II and another two years for volume III.
The rise of the USSR makes for a fascinating story. I don't admire the undertaking, but it commands a degree of appalled respect. Stalin wrenched an agrarian society into an industrial powerhouse by sheer force of will, and with it defeated the most effective (per capita) military force ever fielded in the history of mechanized warfare. At the end of his life (urine-soaked on the floor, his personal attendants too cowed to look in) he had elevated his country on an ocean of blood to the top tier of global power. Hitler might have been a "mad man." Stalin had his missteps, some almost fatal, but for all that his worldview lay within the boundaries of his Marxist worldview, he could be pragmatic when he had to be: contrast this with der Fuehrer's delusional directives from Stalingrad forward.
Highly recommended.
cordially,
Edited by rcareaga
Dec. 5, 2014, 03:26:50 PM EST
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Post #396,910
12/6/14 10:18:34 AM
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Sounds good.
I've got a book on my shelf called Stalin and the Bomb. I can't tell you much about it - I got it shortly after reading Richard Rhodes' amazing opus and his followup. I'm not sure if I read it then or not... It might be worth looking at while waiting for the followup volumes. :-) Ah, to have infinite time to read all the interesting books out there! Thanks. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #396,923
12/7/14 5:37:24 AM
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"Ah, to have infinite time to read all the interesting books out there!"
Done! on Twilight Zone? or a clone:
Guy [Donald Pleasance] was in a sturdy bank vault 'when the balloon went up'. He's carrying some books.
He surveys the debris all around.
Sits on the steps of the impressive stone bank building, then brightens up!
A bibliophile, he utters almost identically, Now I can read all the books I want!
As he rises, his glasses fall off. And break. (Apparently they were very powerful ones, as he's virtually blind.)
Fin. er, :-/
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Post #396,924
12/7/14 10:23:21 AM
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That's a great show.
The finale. Still, one would like to have more time to read!! Of course, retirement is no solution. My dad joked shortly after he retired that the needed to get a part-time job so that he would have some free time... Cheers, Scott.
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Post #396,926
12/7/14 4:47:30 PM
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That's it.. but not Pleasence !? [Also: Rod Serling pdf]
Brain-fart I guess.. I may have missed intro to this episode, but he's not-Donald P.! Would also do fine as henpecked Walter Mitty. Confess too, that monkey brain went all.. tut-tut old chap! Recollect where the opticians used to be, in your little slice of pre-Murica America [couldn't have put it That way, then, of course.] Even if crawling through the wreckage to such oases would Take Time: he Had it. (And some canned goods along the way--takes calories to keep reading-brain stoked. Whatever bizarre formula was in those goggles, stacking together any old "glasses" should have made it possible to try for a better match, even elsewhere. As an omnivorous reader--I further extrapolated--probably Mr. Beemis had some basic knowledge of how his glasses worked, eh? OTOH that same monkey-mind got us Huey Long, Murdoch, Kristol and .. Twitter--each and every--thieves of Time to Read (or any other worthwhile affliction.) I hoped that this was Serling's little Wake-Up Call, sufficiently cute to sneak past the censors (wondered about essays on that theme re this episode.) Found this pdf of a Serling Conference at Ithaca ... for a start. In 1967, Serling first lectured to the students in my class. He enjoyed the experience of interacting with students and he asked me to invite him again. The following year, he was appointed a visiting professor. In that capacity, he taught a one-credit course twice a year. When his schedule allowed it, he would tackle a three-credit course in dramatic writing. The essential elements of his teaching were, of course, creativity, imagination, and the never ending twists and turns in telling a story. “Don’t assume that the current norm shall be your norm,” Rod advised the students. His many students remember him fondly and I often receive emails and comments on how he affected their lives and their outlook.
Rod Serling was very much a part of Ithaca College, . . .friend . . .colleague . . .teacher . . . celebrity-in residence . . . benefactor, although Rod would certainly have disdained the last appellation.
And there was Rod, the television critic. To quote from a lecture to students: “God, how this multi-billion dollar industry can labor so mightily and produce a mouse – and sometimes programming that even a self respecting mouse would find difficult to swallow and keep down. Television gets worse every season even the networks are beginning to blush in living color.”
“It may well be that the level of entertainment may be dictated by the level of commercials. I think it’s a fact that there are a sizable army of yahoos, bunco artists and fast-buck Bible salesmen who are instrumental in achieving – if that’s the word – the artistic levels reached by most current commercials. How do you put on a meaningful drama or documentary that is adult, incisive, probing, when every fifteen minutes the proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper?”
As Rod’s friend Dick Berg said, “Even near death, Rod was determined to share his hospital experiences from the intensive care room. One afternoon in May, while still convalescing from his first heart attack, Rod asked a hospital attendant for his tape recorder. His sense of drama keener than ever, he was unable to resist an impulse to do the thing he did so well, and that was to begin another story. Specifically, the story of Rod Serling confronting the awesome matter of his mortality. “ November '59! Le plus sâ change ... meme chose. Lastly--this skit rammed-home *Then*, instantly: the insanity of M.A.D. {duh} its utter absurdity--rendered Stark to any with nom. physics-sense--and the scariest aspect of all: that millions believed in the rationale for planet-fucking devices, in the name of s e c u r i t y . . . ? This was just 2 years after Sputnik; I 'had' a couple pieces of machined U (238) with sharp edges: pyrophoric! is U: strike these edges and see SPARKS. How's That for a Reminder? (even non-'nuclear'.) Decade later, joined some cohorts picketing LBL-Livermore (Friend decided to twit-further, got self arrested to Santa Rita, etc.) I demurred on that; she was younger; different zeitgeist. Visited across fenced-in yard later. Crazy Times. Like now. And next? Yup: Incorrigibles: most of the population, then as now. Consumption.. it's not just a 'nick for tuberculosis anymore. But it's still a wasting-disease.
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Post #396,933
12/7/14 9:22:15 PM
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Burgess Meredith.
Wikipedia. I mainly know him from playing the Penguin on the Batman TV series. ;-) Indeed he (and Roddenberry and a few others) pushed the envelope and we're better for it. Thanks for the linky. You need to get crackin' on that memoir!! :-) Cheers, Scott.
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Post #396,912
12/6/14 10:55:57 AM
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well he was from georgia
typical black. I always wondered if he hadn't found his Beria, would he have made ww2 or not? Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
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