MORE BOOK REVIEWS.......

The Great Terror - A Reassesment
By Robert Conquest

4.0 out of 5 stars

It's just a step to the right........

A totally scary book!
But is it perverse of me to be have been found giggling during some memorably darker passages of Conquest's famous tome? If the Great Terror wasn't such a mounumental disaster that fell upon both citizen and officialdom and of such tragic proportions it would have made a brilliant synopsis for a 'Keystone Cops' caper.
The mind cannot comprehend the awfulness that was life during the 1930's in Russia; when perpetrators became victims and victims became martyrs and families of perpetrators, victims and martyrs became victims and villains at once themselves.
The many twists and turns of Stalin's paranoic rule become confusing admist the maze of sub-plots and sub-sub plots, but Conquest reminds us often of the stories of the ghosts that haunt this masterful book; and so that we need to worry little if we confuse Bukharin with Zarkov, Beria with Yagoda or Yezhov with Rykov. Suffice to say, it is simply the awfulness of the Great Terror and the banality of the oppression within a totalitarian society that concern us most. The almost tragic-comedy of those revolting perpetrators, whose existence straddled every stratum of the regime and who in turn were dragged off to have great horrors inflicted on them in return for their 'confessions' is simply awe-inspiring and almost unbelievable in its scope and reach.
My only criticism would be that Kruschev's role in all this fine mess was still as mysterious to me at the end of this book as it was at the beginning.
A magnificent education.


Groucho - The life and times of Julius Henry Marx
By Stefan Kanfer

4.0 out 5 stars

"There aint no Sanity Claus....."

Whilst I hate lists, this fine biography is rated at the top of my all-time favourite book list! There is a review on Amazon that fairly debunks the reputation of Kanfer's chronicle of the life and times of Groucho, and one which i took great exception to, whereas normally the opinions of others worry me little.
This is a well researched and well told tale of the brothers Marx and their rise and rise during the heady years of vaudeville as well as a crafted piece of biography of one of its most famous brothers.
Replete with many anecdotes and takes from various scripts, Kanfer delivers a gentle picture of a very flawed and complicated superstar. One that we miss very much even 35 years after his passing.
Lovers of Marx, unite!