2013, ISBN: 9780226212197

edizione con copertina flessibile, edizione con copertina rigida

New York: Random House. Good. 6.75 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches. Hardcover. 1999. First US edition. 373 pages. Name crossed out on ffep.<br>Present-day Russia is the setting for this stunn… Altro …

New York: Random House. Good. 6.75 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches. Hardcover. 1999. First US edition. 373 pages. Name crossed out on ffep.<br>Present-day Russia is the setting for this stunning new novel from Robert Harris, author o f the bestsellers Fatherland and Enigma. Archangel tells the sto ry of four days in the life of Fluke Kelso, a dissipated, middle- aged former Oxford historian, who is in Moscow to attend a confer ence on the newly opened Soviet archives. One night, Kelso is vi sited in his hotel room by an old NKVD officer, a former bodyguar d of the secret police chief Lavrenty Beria. The old man claims t o have been at Stalin's dacha on the night Stalin had his fatal s troke, and to have helped Beria steal the dictator's private pape rs, among them a notebook. Kelso decides to use his last morning in Moscow to check out the old man's story. But what starts as a n idle inquiry in the Lenin Library soon turns into a murderous c hase across nighttime Moscow and up to northern Russia--to the va st forests near the White Sea port of Archangel, where the final secret of Josef Stalin has been hidden for almost half a century. Archangel combines the imaginative sweep and dark suspense of F atherland with the meticulous historical detail of Enigma. The re sult is Robert Harris's most compelling novel yet. Editorial Rev iews Archangel is a remarkably literate novel--and simultaneous ly a gripping thriller--that explores the lingering presence of S talin amidst the corruption of modern-day Russia. Robert Harris ( whose previous works include Enigma and Fatherland) elevates his tale by choosing a narrator with an outsider's perspective but an insider's knowledge of Soviet history: Fluke Kelso, a middle-age d scholar of Soviet Communism with a special interest in the dark secrets of Joseph Stalin. For years, rumors have circulated abou t a notebook that the aging dictator kept in his final years. In a chance encounter in Moscow, Kelso meets Papu Rapava, a former N KVD guard who claims that he was at Stalin's deathbed and says th at he assisted Politburo member Beria in hiding the black oilskin notebook just as Stalin was passing. Before Kelso can get more d etails, Rapava disappears, but the scholar is energized by the ev idence Rapava has provided. As Kelso begins to pursue his histori cal prize, however, his investigation ensnares him in a living we b of Stalinist terror and murder. It soon becomes clear that the notebook is the key to a doorway hiding many secrets, old and new . Harris's understanding of Soviet and modern Russian is impres sive. The novel rests on a seamless blend of fact and fiction tha t places real figures from Soviet history alongside Kelso and his fictional colleagues. Especially disturbing are the transcripts from interrogations and the excerpt from Kelso's lectures on Stal in; the documents provide chilling evidence to support Kelso's cl aim: There can now be no doubt that it is Stalin rather than Hitl er who is the most alarming figure of the twentieth century. --Pa trick O'Kelley From Publishers Weekly As in his first thriller, Fatherland, Harris again plunders the past to tell an icy-slick s tory set mostly in the present. Readers are plunged into mystery, danger and the affairs of great men at once, as, outside Moscow in 1953, Stalin suffers a fatal stroke, and the notorious Beria, head of Stalin's secret police, orders a young guard to swipe a k ey from the dictator's body, to stand watch as Beria uses it to s teal a notebook from Stalin's safe and then to help bury the note book deep in the ground. These events unfold not in flashback pro per but as told to American Sovietologist C.R.A. Fluke Kelso by t he guard, now an old drunk. Following a lead from the old man's s tory as well as other clues, Kelso, soon accompanied by an Americ an satellite-TV journalist, goes in pursuit of the notebook and, later, the explosive secret it contains; others, including those who cherish the days of Stalin's might, are on the chase as well. With this hunt as backbone, the plot fleshes out in muscular fas hion, fed by assorted conspiratorial interests and a welter of co lorful, if sometimes too obvious (Stalin as madman; Beria as sadi st), characters. The crumbling ruin that is today's Moscow comes alive in the details, which continue as Kelso's search moves nort h into the frozen desolation of the White Sea port of Archangel. Sex, violence and violent sex all play a part in Harris's enterta ining, well-constructed, intelligently lurid tale, which, along w ith his first two novels, places him squarely in the footsteps no t of Conrad, Green and le Carre, as the publisher would have it, but of Frederick Forsyth. And, like Forsyth, Harris has yet to wr ite a novel without bestseller stamped on it?including this one. Simultaneous audio book; optioned for film by Mel Gibson. Copyri ght 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Ha rris's first novel, Fatherland (LJ 4/1/92), an international best seller, supposed that Hitler had won World War II. His second, E nigma (LJ 10/1/95), another success, hinged on code-breaking in t he same war. In Archangel, Harris switches to modern, unstable Ru ssia and raises another what-if?suppose a very real pro-Stalinist cult wanted to bring back to power one of Stalin's sons. A discr edited Oxford historian and an American TV journalist stumble ove r papers suggesting such a possibility. They stay barely one jump ahead of sinister competing forces in pursuing a twisting tale t hat keeps the reader turning pages almost past the bizarre surpri ses at the end. A former journalist and author of several nonfict ion works, Harris skillfully mixes historical detail and fiction. This is likely to be as big a hit as the earlier two suspense ta les, and libraries everywhere should be prepared. -?Roland C. Per son, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist A possible Communist ( or Facsist) restoration in Russia furnishes promising material fo r fictional espionage (witness Frederick Forsyth's Icon, 1996). H arris posits the existence of hitherto-unknown papers belonging t o Stalin, which vanished into the hands of the notorious secret p olice chief, Beria. This intriguing curtain-raiser is confided to historian Fluke Kelso by Beria's bodyguard. Sensing a historical coup, Kelso finds confirmation of the missing papers in Dmitri V olkogonov's biography of Stalin (Triumph and Tragedy, 1991) and i nterviews one of Volkogonov's sources, a cagey ex-KGB operative. Kelso also tries to recontact Beria's bodyguard, who had held bac k on the location of the papers, by looking for his daughter. He finds both: the father has been butchered, but the daughter is al ive, and she leads Kelso to the papers. They are curiously innocu ous, alluding only to a young girl from Archangel. Kelso's diggin g has by now attracted heavy surveillance from Russian intelligen ce, as well as an unwanted partner in the form of nosy, obnoxious TV reporter R. J. O'Brian, who's itching to break the story of S talin's nubile paramour. So, everyone's off to Archangel, whose d ilapidated state Harris evokes as well as the increasing tension of Kelso's search for the now-elderly girl. Instead of the girl, they turn up her mother, whose story of a baby--the son of Stalin --raised in the surrounding taiga diverts everyone, tailing off i nto the forest for the blazing conclusion and revelation of Joe J unior's political significance. Building on his accurate historic al sense, Harris inveigles readers with intricate plotting and co ncrete descriptions of Russia's contemporary look, rewarding them with a thoroughly thrilling tale. Gilbert Taylor From Kirkus Re views Lg. Prt. 0-375-70412-4 Top-flight thriller, something of a variation on le Carr's The Russia House, as an American historian tracks down a MacGuffin of far greater value than the Maltese fa lcon. Fluke Kelso, having published two books about the fall of t he Soviet empire, finds himself invited to a symposium in Moscow that will supposedly focus on newly released archival material. S ome think Kelso will reveal yet another bombshell. And that might be true, since he has secretly interviewed elderly Papu Rapava, bodyguard of KGB chief Lavrenty Beria, about the night that Stali n died. Rapava observed all as Beria took a key from Stalin's nec k and stole from a safe an oilskin pouch holding the dictators me moirs (an improvisation on the theme of Harris's first book, 1986 's Selling Hitler, about the faking of the Hitler diaries). Later , the pouch was buried in Beria's backyard. The ever-avid Kelso g oes ferreting through some recently declassified papers in the Le nin Library, then hunts up Vladimir Mamantov, a Stalinist fanatic he'd interviewed years ago for his big book about the Soviet col lapse, a book sneered at by Mamantov because it painted Stalin bl ack. Mamantov concedes that in Western terms the man was a monste r, but avers that by Soviet standards he lifted the USSR from the tractor to the atomic bomb. And Mamantov opines to Kelso that St alinism will return: some 20 million Russians still believe Stali n was the greatest figure of the centurya rather large bloc shoul d some other charismatic figure rise anew to lead it once again. After Kelso makes a secret trip to Beria's house and discovers fr eshly turned earth, he falls in with an American TV reporter whil e being tracked by the RT Directorate's chief. Deaths ensue as th e trail leads to the White Sea port of Archangel, where Kelso doe s indeed make a momentous discovery. No personal demons here to s oothe, but Harriss (Enigma, 1995, etc.) knack for re-creating his torical events puts him in very select company. -- Copyright 1998 , Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Review Praise for ENIGMA Elegant, atmospheric . . . a tense and thoughtful thrill er. --San Francisco Chronicle Literate and savvy . . . It's alw ays a pleasure to encounter a historical thriller this subtle and detailed. . . . [ ] brims with wartime intrigue and paranoia. -- The Washington Post Book World FATHERLAND A stunning debut. --B oston Globe An elegant thriller, a thoughtful, frightening stor y of complicity. --San Francisco Chronicle An absorbing, expert ly written novel. --The New York Times From the Inside Flap Rus sia is the setting for this stunning new novel from Robert Harris , author of the bestsellers Fatherland and Enigma. Archangel tel ls the story of four days in the life of Fluke Kelso, a dissipate d, middle-aged former Oxford historian, who is in Moscow to atten d a conference on the newly opened Soviet archives. One night, K elso is visited in his hotel room by an old NKVD officer, a forme r bodyguard of the secret police chief Lavrenty Beria. The old ma n claims to have been at Stalin's dacha on the night Stalin had h is fatal stroke, and to have helped Beria steal the dictator's pr ivate papers, among them a notebook. Kelso decides to use his la st morning in Moscow to check out the old man's story. But what s tarts as an idle inquiry in the Lenin Library soon turns into a m urderous chase From the Back Cover Praise for ENIGMA Elegant, atmospheric . . . a tense and thoughtful thriller. --San Francis co Chronicle Literate and savvy . . . It's always a pleasure to encounter a historical thriller this subtle and detailed. . . . [ ] brims with wartime intrigue and paranoia. --The Washington P ost Book World FATHERLAND A stunning debut. --Boston Globe An elegant thriller, a thoughtful, frightening story of complicity. --San Francisco Chronicle An absorbing, expertly written novel . --The New York Times About the Author Robert Harris has been a television correspondent with the BBC and a newspaper columnis t for the London Sunday Times. His novels have sold more than six million copies and been translated into thirty languages. He liv es in Berkshire, England, with his wife and three young children. Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. To choo se one's victims, to prepare one's plans minutely, to slake an im placable vengeance, and then to go to bed . . . there is nothing sweeter in the world. --J. V. Stalin, in conversation with Kamene v and Dzerzhinsky Olga Komarova of the Russian Archive Service, Rosarkhiv, wielding a collapsible pink umbrella, prodded and shoo ed her distinguished charges across the Ukraina's lobby toward th e revolving door. It was an old door, of heavy wood and glass, to o narrow to cope with more than one body at a time, so the schola rs formed a line in the dim light, like parachutists over a targe t zone, and as they passed her, Olga touched each one lightly on the shoulder with her umbrella, counting them off one by one as t hey were propelled into the freezing Moscow air. Franklin Adelma n of Yale went first, as befitted his age and status, then Molden hauer of the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, with his absurd double doct orate--Dr. Dr. Karl-bloody-Moldenhauer--then the neo-Marxists, En rico Banfi of Milan and Eric Chambers of the LSE, then the great cold warrior Phil Duberstein, of NYU, then Ivo Godelier of the Ec ole Normale Suprieure, followed by glum Dave Richards of St. Anto ny's, Oxford--another Sovietologist whose world was rubble--then Velma Byrd of the U.S. National Archive, then Alastair Findlay of Edinburgh's Department of War Studies, who still thought the sun shone out of Comrade Stalin's ass, then Arthur Saunders of Stanf ord, and finally--the man whose lateness had kept them waiting in the lobby for an extra five minutes--Dr. C.R.A. Kelso, commonly known as Fluke. The door banged hard against his heels. Outside, the weather had worsened. It was trying to snow. Tiny flakes, as hard as grit, came whipping across the wide gray concourse and s pattered his face and hair. At the bottom of the flight of steps, shuddering in a cloud of its own white fumes, was a dilapidated bus, waiting to take them to the symposium. Kelso stopped to ligh t a cigarette. Jesus, Fluke, called Adelman, cheerfully. You loo k just awful. Kelso raised a fragile hand in acknowledgment. He c ould see a huddle of taxi drivers in quilted jackets stamping the ir feet against the cold. Workmen were struggling to lift a roll of tin off the back of a truck. One Korean businessman in a fur h at was photographing a group of twenty others, similarly dressed. But of Papu Rapava, no sign. Dr. Kelso, please, we are waiting a gain. The umbrella wagged at him in reproof. He transferred the c igarette to the corner of his mouth, hitched his bag up onto his shoulder, and m, Random House, 1999, 2.75, Crown Forum. Very Good. 9.75 x 1.5 x 6.5 inches. Hardcover. 2005. 352 pages. <br>The fateful blunder that radically altered the cou rse of the twentieth century-and led to some of the most murderou s dictators in history President Woodrow Wilson famously rallied the United States to enter World War I by saying the nation had a duty to make the world safe for democracy. But as historian Jim Powell demonstrates in this shocking reappraisal, Wilson actuall y made a horrible blunder by committing the United States to figh t. Far from making the world safe for democracy, America's entry into the war opened the door to murderous tyrants and Communist r ulers. No other president has had a hand-however unintentional-in so much destruction. That's why, Powell declares, Wilson surely ranks as the worst president in American history. Wilson's War r eveals the horrifying consequences of our twenty-eighth president 's fateful decision to enter the fray in Europe. It led to millio ns of additional casualties in a war that had ground to a stalema te. And even more disturbing were the long-term consequences-cons equences that played out well after Wilson's death. Powell convin cingly demonstrates that America's armed forces enabled the Allie s to win a decisive victory they would not otherwise have won-thu s enabling them to impose the draconian surrender terms on German y that paved the way for Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Powell a lso shows how Wilson's naiveté and poor strategy allowed the Bols heviks to seize power in Russia. Given a boost by Woodrow Wilson, Lenin embarked on a reign of terror that continued under Joseph Stalin. The result of Wilson's blunder was seventy years of Sovie t Communism, during which time the Communist government murdered some sixty million people. Just as Powell's FDR's Folly exploded the myths about Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, Wilson's Wa r destroys the conventional image of Woodrow Wilson as a great pr ogressive who showed how the United States can do good by interve ning in the affairs of other nations. Jim Powell delivers a stunn ing reminder that we should focus less on a president's high-mind ed ideals and good intentions than on the consequences of his act ions. A selection of the Conservative Book Club and American Com pass Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly The Holocaust, th e gulags, the Cold War and a death toll exceeding 61,911,000 can all be laid at Wilson's doorstep, contends this sophomoric work i n isolationist historiography. Powell, a Cato Institute fellow an d author of FDR's Folly, argues that Wilson's intervention in WWI enabled the Allies to defeat Germany and impose a punitive peace settlement that made Germans bitter and antidemocratic, facilita ted Hitler's rise, etc. Extending--indeed, almost parodying--Nial l Ferguson's contrarian arguments from The Pity of War, he insist s that a victorious German Empire would have subsided under its o wn weight, with Hitler and Stalin remaining unknown malcontents. Powell rehashes his arguments at inordinate length to associate W ilson's policies with subsequent Nazi and Soviet atrocities. When not flaying Wilson, Powell rides Cato's hobbyhorse of libertaria n doctrine, sprinkling his chronicle of totalitarian horrors with prim sermons on free trade and laissez-faire economics; the Bols heviks are thus scolded for their opposition to consumers freely voting with their money, deciding which quantities, qualities, br ands, styles, colors, prices, and so on that they preferred. Powe ll scores some points criticizing the flimsiness of Wilson's pret exts for intervention. But in using the unforeseen consequences o f Wilson's actions as a brief for isolationism, he ends up blamin g the 20th-century time line on one man. The result is a tendenti ous and heavy-handed distortion of history. (Apr.) Copyright ® R eed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All ri ghts reserved. Review That government intervention can have unin tended consequences is nowhere more true than in foreign policy. Wilson's War brings the lesson home in a way Americans today can ill afford to ignore. Read this absorbing and critically importan t book. -Thomas E. Woods Jr., author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History Jim Powell makes a persuasive case ag ainst Woodrow Wilson. But I disagree with Jim. During the latter part of his second term Wilson was nearly comatose, thereby makin g him the perfect progressive interventionist politician, in my o pinion. -P. J. O'Rourke, author of Peace Kills and Parliament of Whores Wilson's War makes a compelling case that Woodrow Wilson was America's worst president and an unmitigated disaster for th e world. In a learned exposition of the Law of Unintended Consequ ences, Jim Powell shows how U.S. intervention into World War I st rengthened the hand of Soviet Communism and led directly to the r ise of Hitler and World War II. Wilson's War exposes how America' s court historians have misled the public for generations. -Thoma s J. DiLorenzo, author of The Real Lincoln and How Capitalism Sav ed America Wilson's War is a highly controversial interpretation of twentieth-century political history, which asserts that its w orst evils-Communism and Nazism-were unintended consequences of P resident Wilson's decision to enter World War I on the Allied sid e. -Richard Pipes, Baird Professor of History, Emeritus, Harvard University Praise for FDR's Folly and The Triumph of Liberty Th oroughly documented, relying on an impressive variety of popular and academic literature, both contemporary and historical. -Milto n Friedman, Nobel Laureate I found Jim Powell's book fascinating . I think he has written an important story, one that definitely needs telling. -Thomas Fleming, author of The New Dealers' War an d Liberty! Jim Powell is a man of great energy, determination, o bstinacy, and courage, and all these qualities have gone into his work. -Paul Johnson, author of A History of the American People and Modern Times About the Author Historian Jim Powell is the au thor of FDR's Folly and The Triumph of Liberty. A senior fellow a t the Cato Institute since 1988, he has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, American Heritage, Barron's, Esqu ire, the Chicago Tribune, Money magazine, Reason, and numerous ot her national publications. He has lectured at Harvard, Stanford, and other universities across the United States, as well as in Eu rope, Asia, and South America. Powell lives in Connecticut with h is family. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All rights reserv ed. 1 HOW DID THAT MONSTROUS WAR HAPPEN? World War I marked the end of a glorious era, the most peaceful period in modern histor y. The last general European war had concluded a century earlier, in 1815, when the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated and banished to a shabby house on St. Helena, a British-controll ed island in the South Atlantic Ocean, about 1,140 miles west of South Africa. The Napoleonic Wars helped convince several genera tions that war was an evil to be avoided. The dapper Corsican Nap oleon had emerged as a military strongman amid the wreckage of th e French Revolution. In 1799 and 1800 he led successful French mi litary campaigns against Austro-Hungarian armies in Italy and Ger many. In 1799 he seized power in a coup. He declared himself to b e consul for life. He resolved to conquer Egypt, gain French terr itory in the Caribbean, and extend his influence throughout the M editerranean. He annexed Piedmont and forced a more congenial gov ernment on the Swiss Confederation. Napoleon established the fir st modern police state. He tapped Joseph Fouche, who had been edu cated for the clergy but had never taken his vows as a priest, to organize a secret police force. As a Jacobin during the French R evolution, Fouche had organized mass shootings. He developed Napo leon's spy network throughout Europe, and he arranged to have adv ersaries abducted and shot. The nationalist fury that swept thro ugh Germany during the mid-twentieth century, providing political support for Hitler, began to develop after Napoleon humiliated t he German-speaking people. He defeated the Austrian army at Auste rlitz (1805) and crushed the Prussians at Jena (1806). Prussian g enerals turned out to be cowards, and the Prussian army quickly d isintegrated. Prussia had built a system of forts that were expec ted to provide a sturdy defense, but they generally surrendered w ithout much resistance. Napoleon ordered that German-speaking sta tes, including Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Nass au, and Berg, be combined to form the Confederation du Rhin--the Confederation of the Rhine. The French had already, in 1792, anne xed territories west of the Rhine, notably Cologne and Mainz. Na poleon dismissed corrupt old tyrants, an action that local people surely appreciated, but in many cases they were replaced by Napo leon's relatives, who became corrupt new tyrants. He imposed his Code Napoleon on conquered territories. Based on Roman law and so me 14,000 decrees issued during the French Revolution, this was a simplified civil law code providing uniform rules for people to live by. Napoleon abolished the hodgepodge of feudal laws and cus toms. As historian J. M. Thompson noted, The Code Napoleon contai ned less than 120,000 words and could be carried in the pocket. Some 100,000 of Napoleon's troops occupied Prussia at the nation' s expense. In 1807 he signed the Treaty of Tilsit with Russia, st ripping Prussia of German-speaking provinces north and west of th e lower Elbe River, and Polish provinces to the east.Altogether, Prussian territory was cut from 89,120 square miles to 46,032. Na poleon demanded that the Prussian government pay him 140 million francs. This amounted to a huge tax that devastated the economy. Making things worse was Napoleon's Continental System, aimed at h arming Britain by closing Europe's ports. The Continental System meant that Prussia couldn't earn its accustomed revenues from gra in exports. When Napoleon was paid off, he withdrew his forces f rom Prussia and turned his attention elsewhere, and the Prussian king pondered how his state might regain its place in the world. He was persuaded to name Karl vom Stein as chief minister. Stein was fascinated by Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, who had urged drama tic reforms on the last French king to possess absolute power, Lo uis XVI. Stein persuaded Frederick William III to issue the Edict of Emancipation, in October 1807, which abolished feudal privile ges and restrictions on the sale of land. In other words, he open ed up property markets, erasing legal distinctions among aristocr ats, merchants, or peasants. Stein also extended civil rights to Jews. He was convinced these reforms would unleash the energies o f the people. Prussia also reformed what was left of its army: i neffective officers were dismissed; junior officers were promoted on merit; army policies were adopted to improve efficiency. The long process of rebuilding got under way. The consequences of the Napoleonic Wars were devastating as they played out decades late r in Prussia and throughout Europe. The Napoleonic Wars themselv es were bad enough. Historian Paul Johnson observed that the wars set back the economic life of much of Europe for a generation. T hey made men behave like beasts, and worse. The battles were bigg er and much more bloody. The armies of the old regimes were of lo ng-service professional veterans, often lifers, obsessed with uni forms, pipe clay, polished brass, and their elaborate drill-the k ings could not bear to lose them. Bonaparte cut off the pigtails, ended the powdered hair, supplied mass-produced uniforms and spe nt the lives of his young, conscripted recruits as though they we re loose change. His insistence that they live off the land did n ot work in subsistence economies like Spain and Russia, where if the soldiers stole, the peasants starved. . . . Throughout Europe , the standards of human conduct declined as men and women, and t heir growing children, learned to live brutally. The savagery wa s shocking. Reporting on Napoleon's campaign in Spain, historian Antonina Vallentin wrote: French corpses piled up in the mountain ravines. . . . Drunk with fury against the servants of Christ wh o preached hatred, the French soldiers sacked the churches, carri ed away the objects of veneration, profaned the House. The villag e priests slaughtered the French who sought refuge among them. Fa rms were left burning like torches when the French had passed by. The wounded and the ill were murdered as they were being taken f rom one place to another. The roads were strewn with denuded corp ses; the trees were weighed down with the bodies of men hanged; b lind hate was loosed against hate, a nameless terror roamed the d eserted countryside, death came slowly through the most frightful mutilations. Napoleon's worst horrors occurred during the Russi an campaign. In the spring of 1812, he assembled some 600,000 sol diers-his Grand Army including Prussians, Austrians, and Italians . They crossed the Niemen River, which flows from western Russia into the Baltic, and headed east in a front some 300 miles wide. Napoleon wanted a decisive battle that would force Czar Alexander I to become his subject, but the czar's forces harassed Napoleon 's soldiers in skirmishes, then withdrew into the interior of the country, destroying fields, towns, and cities as they went, deny ing Napoleon the opportunity to replenish his supplies. The farth er Napoleon advanced, the farther Russian forces withdrew, and th e more devastation Napoleon encountered. His forces entered Smole nsk, only to find it consumed by flames. According to historian Christopher Herold, The progress of his carriage along a road cho ked with limping cripples, stretchers, and ambulances set him int o a somber mood. In Smolensk he passed carts loaded with amputate d limbs. In the hospitals the surgeons ran out of dressings and u sed paper and birch bark fibers as substitutes; many of those who survived surgery died of starvation, for the supply service had virtually broken down. In addition to the battle casualties, hund reds of men fell victim to the Russian secret weapon, vodka, dyin g by the roadside from a combination of raw spirits and exposure. Such, it must be emphasized, was the condition of the Grand Army not during its tragic retreat but during its victorious advance. Although Napoleon's supply lines were stretched to the limit, h e could see that his forces wo, Crown Forum, 2005, 3, Simon & Schuster. Very Good. 6 x 1.4 x 9 inches. Hardcover. 2013. 432 pages. <br>A myth-busting insider's account of the Iranian Re volution of 1979 that destroyed US influence in the country and t ransformed the politics of the Middle East and the world. The 1 979 Islamic revolution in Iran was one of the seminal events of o ur time. It inaugurated more than thirty years of war in the Midd le East and fostered an Islamic radicalism that shapes foreign po licy in the United States and Europe to this day. Drawing on hi s lifetime of engagement with Iran, James Buchan explains the his tory that gave rise to the Revolution, in which Ayatollah Khomein i and his supporters displaced the Shah with little diffi­culty. Mystifyingly to outsiders, the people of Iran turned their backs on a successful Westernized government for an amateurish religiou s regime. Buchan dispels myths about the Iranian Revolution and i nstead assesses the historical forces to which it responded. He p uts the extremism of the Islamic regime in perspective: a truly r adical revolution, it can be compared to the French or Russian Re volu­tions. Using recently declassified diplomatic papers and Per sian-language news reports, diaries, memoirs, interviews, and the ological tracts, Buchan illumi­nates both Khomeini and the Shah. His writing is always clear, dispassionate, and informative. Th e Iranian Revolution was a turning point in modern history, and J ames Buchan's Days of God is, as London's Independent put it, a c ompelling, beautifully written history of that event. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly British novelist and journalist B uchan traveled to Iran as an undergraduate in the 1970s. Shocked by its dissipated modernity, he says, I thought I had come too la te to see what I had come to see, forgetting an ancient lesson: t hat in a year or two even this, also, would be obliterated. His d eep connection to the country serves him well in this sweeping pa norama of the Shah's Iran and its rejuvenation, occlusion, and di sintegration under Khomeini. Buchan's dry wit suffuses the poetic and philosophical--if not always straightforward--text; characte rs appear in major episodes before they have been properly introd uced, events are mentioned in passing before they unfold. He devo tes equal space to critical yet sympathetic portraits of the Reza s and to Khomeini. Of the first Pahlavi Shah, he says, In introdu cing the notion of a powerful state, Reza was the most influentia l Iranian of the last century, more influential even than Ruholla h Khomeini. The Ayatollah, pensive and closed to the world, drown ed his religion and his country in a ruthless obscurantism: It is said that once in Isfahan, the great Safavid divine Majlisi gave an apple to a Jew.... No such stories are told of Ruhollah Khome ini. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary Agency. (Oct. 15) Fr om Booklist *Starred Review* The recent history of Iran is a stor y dominated by stories of pillage by Western powers, swings towar d military dictatorship, and promises unfulfilled. In this fascin ating work reaching back to the close of the nineteenth century, Persian scholar Buchan has marshaled much of the available docume ntation and his own personal experiences in producing this defini tive account of the long, revolutionary birth of the theocracy in Iran. Along the way, Buchan reveals an Iranian nation ever strug gling toward modernity and torn by its past steeped in colonialis m. The majority of the work follows the reign of Reza and Mohamma d Reza of the Pahlavi dynasty, who attempted to drag Iran out of its medieval past on the fluctuating tide of oil prices only to b e whisked aside upon the return of the exile Khomeini, in 1979. B uchan strikes a hopeful tone that if Iran can negotiate the nucle ar crisis, it can enter the ranks of the advanced nations. Reader s of Middle Eastern histories and diplomacy will find Buchan's sk illful narrative both edifying and intellectually engaging. --Bri an Odom Review The author's grasp of Persian literature and the Persian language allows him to treat Iran's 1979 Islamic Revoluti on with rare insight and compassion. -- Roya Hakakian ? The Wall Street Journal Magisterial. . . . James Buchan's Days of God, a survey of the Pahlavi years, with spectacular detail on the revol ution itself, includes some deft portraiture and notes of literar y grace. Buchan, who lived in Iran in the late 1970s, writes with an irreverence and confidence born of long familiarity, and the Iran of his history feels vibrantly present. -- Laura Secor ? For eign Affairs [Buchan] mines the literature in Persian and Englis h to better effect than any historian so far....[a] fine, elegant ly written book. ? The Economist This is a compelling, beautiful ly written history of a country which has produced great literatu re, art and a warm people whose lives have been manipulated by ot her countries with ulterior motives and by their own autocratic a nd theocratic dictators. -- Leyla Sanai ? The Independent A soun dly argued account of the causes, course and consequences of the revolution . . . Buchan, a Persian scholar and former Financial T imes foreign correspondent, puts his first-hand experience of Ira n to perceptive use. -- Tony Barber ? Financial Times A wonderfu lly detailed and authoritative account of the Shah's final days a nd the murder and mayhem that followed. -- Jonathan Rugman ? The Spectator A superb and original history of the Iranian Revolutio n. It's essential reading. -- Simon Sebag Montefiore ? Mail on Su nday Books of the Year An outstanding analysis of the legacy of Iran's revolution. ? Sunday Times A well-informed account of rev olutionary Iran. -- David Pryce-Jones ? National Review May be t he best single general-audience book on the Iranian Revolution. . . . Days of God is a balanced portrait of an unbalanced time, an d one of the most distinguished books about a revolution that has still not reached its conclusion. -- Graeme Wood ? The Christian Science Monitor About the Author James Buchan holds a degree in Persian studies from Oxford University. He worked for twelve yea rs as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times. He has wri tten three works of nonfiction and six novels, including Heart's Journey in Winter, which won the Guardian Fiction Award, and A Go od Place to Die, which was a New York Times Notable Book. He live s on a farm in eastern England. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permissi on. All rights reserved. Days of God Introduction I first came to Iran in 1974, the year the price of crude oil rose fourfold a nd Europe switched off its power stations. After the darkness of the autobahns, I found the city of Tabriz illuminated as if for a perpetual wedding. On my first day in Tehran, the capital, I was taken on by a school teaching the English language to cadets of the Imperial Iranian Air Force. The rows of desks receded out of sight. It was Ramazan, when Muslims fast the daylight hours, and the pupils dozed on their pen-cases or glared at the wrapped sand wiches they had brought in to eat at sundown. Among those Turkoma n boys, there must have been the makings of at least one military aviator, and it was I who was going to make the start on him. I was the smallest component in one of the greatest military expans ions ever undertaken. The owner of the school was a brigadier gen eral and I used to see him, in uniform in the afternoons, strikin g the male secretaries. At payday, the cashier, an old man with s tubble on his chin, who was the general's father, took half an ho ur to sign my check. An Indian colleague whispered that a tip was expected. I quit. I moved to Isfahan, the famous old city in th e heart of the country. I found a job in a morning, teaching scho olgirls. I was a bad teacher, but I was an Oxford sophomore and n ineteen years old. The class doubled in size and halved in fluenc y. My pupils cultivated feeling to a pitch, and sighed over adjec tives. They made fun of me, as if I had been a bashful seminary s tudent. Bred up in the medieval Persian of Oxford University, I was baffled by Iranian modernity. In this famous town, with its p alaces so flimsy you could blow them over with a sigh, there were military instructors from Grumman Corp. and Bell Helicopter Inte rnational, with their Asian women and a screw loose from Vietnam, sobbing in hotel lobbies. I thought I had come too late to see w hat I had come to see, forgetting an ancient lesson: that in a ye ar or two even this, also, would be obliterated. I did not know, as I know now, that nations salvage what they can from the wreck of history, and the warriors of the national poet Ferdowsi were the tough guys or lutis (buggers) of the bazaar, and the lyrics o f Hafez were the songs on the car radio: Black-eyed, tall and sle nder, Oh to win Leila! The Isfahan women rose early, buying their food from the grocery fresh each day, a clay bowl of yoghurt whi ch they smashed after use, or those bundles of green herbs that K homeini liked to eat, all to cook the daily lunch. For an English man, standing in line to buy cigarettes, it was tempting enough t o stay and settle down with one of these angels, and pass his lif e in inconsequential fantasies. The grocer wore a double-breasted suit of wide 1930s cut, a tribal cap, and the rag-soled cotton s lippers known as giveh. It was as if he had thrown off a tyrannic al dress code, but only at its up and down extremities. It seemed to me that the Shah had run a blunt saw across the very grain of Iranianness. In the cool vaults of the Isfahan bazaar, where I supplemented my wages by dealing in bad antiques, a lane would en d in a chaos of smashed brick and a blinding highway, as if Moham med Reza Pahlavi was trying to abolish something other than medie val masonry: an entire and traditional way of life, with its proc ession from shop to mosque to bath to shop to mosque and its inte rminable religious ceremonies. Somebody, presumably the Russians , had given the Iranians a taste for assassination and vodka. Som ebody else, no doubt the Americans, had given them Pepsi and ice cream. A third, perhaps the British, had taught them to love opiu m. Laid across that beautiful town was some personality that expr essed itself in straight roads crossing at right angles, mosques turned into mere works of art, and all the frowstiness of an over taken modernity. It was uneducated or even illiterate, violent, a varicious, in a hurry to get somewhere it never arrived. I know n ow that that personality was the Shah's father, Reza. Over that w as another impression, not at all forceful, but cynical, melancho ly, pleasure-loving, distrustful, also in a hurry. I supposed tha t was Mohammed Reza. I did not understand why those kings were in such a hurry but I knew that haste, as the Iranians say, is the devil's work. I could see that Iran was going to hell but could n ot for the life of me descry what kind of hell. James Buchan En gland, 2013 ., Simon & Schuster, 2013, 3, Paperback / softback. New. Features a treatise on polite behavior. As relevant today as it was in Renaissance Italy, this title deals with subjects as varied as dress codes, charming conversation and off-color jokes, eating habits and hairstyles, and literary language., 6<

ISBN: 9780226212197

?Since it is the case that you are now just beginning that journey that I have for the most part as you see completed, that is, the one through mortal life, and loving you so very much as… Altro …

?Since it is the case that you are now just beginning that journey that I have for the most part as you see completed, that is, the one through mortal life, and loving you so very much as I do, I have proposed to myself?as one who has been many places?to show you those places in life where, walking through them, I fear you could easily either fall or take the wrong direction.? So begins Galateo, a treatise on polite behavior written by Giovanni Della Casa (1503?56) for the benefit of his nephew, a young Florentine destined for greatness.           In the voice of a cranky yet genial old uncle, Della Casa offers the distillation of what he has learned over a lifetime of public service as diplomat and papal nuncio. As relevant today as it was in Renaissance Italy, Galateo deals with subjects as varied as dress codes, charming conversation and off-color jokes, eating habits and hairstyles, and literary language. In its time, Galateo circulated as widely as Machiavelli's Prince and Castiglione's Book of the Courtier. Mirroring what Machiavelli did for promoting political behavior, and what Castiglione did for behavior at court, Della Casa here creates a picture of the refined man caught in a world in which embarrassment and vulgarity prevail. Less a treatise promoting courtly values or a manual of savoir faire, it is rather a meditation on conformity and the law, on perfection and rules, but also an exasperated?often theatrical?reaction to the diverse ways in which people make fools of themselves in everyday social situations.           With renewed interest in etiquette and polite behavior growing both inside and outside the academy, the time is right for a new, definitive edition of this book. More than a mere etiquette book, this restored edition will be entertaining (and even useful) for anyone making their way in modern civilized and polite society, and a subtle gift for the rude neighbor, the thoughtless dinner guest, or the friend or r ... Books, [PU: University of Chicago Press]<

2014, ISBN: 9780226212197

Editor: Rusnak, M. F. Translator: Rusnak, M. F. University of Chicago Press, Paperback, Auflage: Illustrated, 144 Seiten, Publiziert: 2014-10-08T00:00:01Z, Produktgruppe: Book, 0.2 kg, Ve… Altro …

Editor: Rusnak, M. F. Translator: Rusnak, M. F. University of Chicago Press, Paperback, Auflage: Illustrated, 144 Seiten, Publiziert: 2014-10-08T00:00:01Z, Produktgruppe: Book, 0.2 kg, Verkaufsrang: 1869688, Italian, European, World Literature, Literature & Fiction, Subjects, Books, Literary, Ancient & Medieval Literature, Reference, History, Religious Studies, Religion & Spirituality, Format: Illustrated, University of Chicago Press, 2014<