An original analysis of a crucial period of history, providing important context for the present.
An intriguing new history about how the Cold War was primarily a conflict of psychology.
Sixsmith, who reported on Russia for the BBC during the 1980s, delves into the psychological issues of the time, especially the thinking of the leaders and the reactions of ordinary people. He believes that the two sides continually failed to comprehend each other’s beliefs and motivations, seeing themselves as morally superior and the other as the font of all evil. The Americans never grasped the nexus between communist ideology and the Russian cultural tradition of centralized power, and Soviet leaders always believed that the U.S. was controlled by a secret cabal of billionaires and generals. This lack of understanding was crucial given the nuclear arsenals involved. “The inherent flaw of brinkmanship is to assume that each side agrees where the brink is,” writes the author. “But as Washington and Moscow pushed each other into increasingly aggressive stances, it was never completely clear that the Soviets and Americans truly knew where or when the tipping point might come.” To build popular support, the two superpowers churned out propaganda, particularly cinema. Sixsmith notes that Vladimir Putin decided to join the KGB after seeing a movie about secret agent Belov, a Soviet version of James Bond. However, the essential weakness of autocracy is that it cannot renew itself through self-criticism or elections. Eventually, in the long decay of the Brezhnev era, there was no way to match the Soviet regime’s message of prosperity and freedom with the lived reality. Russians simply ceased to believe in socialism, as the author’s chapter on the jokes of the period reveals. The U.S., for all its deficiencies, has retained many of its core beliefs. Sixsmith covers a great deal of territory, and the text is long and often dense. But there are useful lessons for the current geopolitical landscape, and the author’s essential point—know yourself in order to know the Other—is as valuable as ever.
An original analysis of a crucial period of history, providing important context for the present.Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63936-181-6
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
HISTORY | PSYCHOLOGY | MODERN | MILITARY | WORLD
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
