RaveThe New York TimesThis volume, with its brisk, enjoyable narrative, succeeds in every sense: sweep, depth, liveliness, color, tempo. Each chapter shines with mastery and authority. A conscientious biography of a worthy subject cannot help being a portrait of the times, and Taubman\'s book fully lives up to the \'\'and his era\'\' of the subtitle. It is a multifaceted study of the key political and economic forces of the first 47 years -- almost two-thirds of the total -- of the Soviet civilization ... Taubman provides a number of explanations, all plausible and helpful, as clues to Khrushchev\'s de-Stalinizing impulse, but characteristically he respects the reader and refrains from ex cathedra pronouncements. This is as it should be ... In the end, it is hard to summarize this man better than Taubman does: \'complicit in great evil yet also the author of much good.\'
