Khrushchev: The Man and His Era [Hardcover]

'[An] outstanding, superbly gripping and surely definitive biography . . . Fascinating'

'A portrait unlikely to be surpassed any time soon either in richness or complexity . . . [A] monumental biography'

'A very good book -- it is a piece of literary craftsmanship as well as scholarship'

'Taubman's biography is the fullest to date and leaves no doubt about what an extraordinary figure Khrushchev was'

'Masterly . . . Taubman has painted a remarkable portrait'

A magisterial, definitive and compelling assessment of one of the giants of twentieth-century history: former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. William Taubman's brilliant biography of one of the key figures of the Soviet Union is a study in contrasts -- how the boy from a peasant background rose to the heights of power; how a single-minded, ambitious political player survived twenty years under Stalin; how he opened up to the West after Stalin's death and yet brought the world close to oblivion in the Cuban Missile Crisis. What emerges is a fascinating picture of a man constantly torn between benevolence and malevolence -- a man who made himself cultured and yet who could never really escape his image as a bullying country bumpkin (most famously demonstrated by his interruption of Macmillan's speech to the UN in 1960 by banging his shoe on the table -- the urbane Macmillan responded, 'Mr President, perhaps we could have a translation, I could not quite follow'). William Taubman has previously edited collections of Nikita Khrushchev's speeches and reminiscences and is completely immersed in this subject -- his biography is likely to remain the standard work for years to come.

William Taubman is the Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. In addition to having spent fifteen years researching this volume, Taubman is the author of STALIN'S AMERICAN POLICY (1982) and MOSCOW SPRING (1989).