RaveThe Telegraph (UK)Mark B Smith’s magnificent new history, Exit Stalin, lays bare the reality of daily life during the USSR’s death spiral ... Not merely a political history of a country that struggled for decades before eventually gaining its place as one of the world’s two superpowers ... Smith focuses on cultural and social history, ensuring we grasp the dismal conditions in which people existed ... Smith’s description of the chaotic and rapid decline of those last years is careful and vivid ... This immensely important book charts a history of idealism that failed because of its inherent lack of liberty, its repressiveness and its corruption.
RaveThe Telegraph (UK)Impressive ... Sebba’s command of detail is superb. She quite rightly outlines the atrocities of the sadists, psychopaths and savages whom Auschwitz seemed to attract like a magnet; but also the resilience and courage of a group of women who refused to be beaten by evil, and used music to save their lives.
James Holland
RaveThe Telegraph (UK)Holland, aided by the team he generously credits, has done a tremendous job of research and translation in preparing this book. The detail is superb ... Astonishingly thorough and meticulously researched; it should become a standard work on this campaign.
Richard J Evans
PositiveThe Telegraph (UK)Much of this will be well-known to students of this subject, and because many of the henchmen were present at the same events as each other, there are elements of repetitiveness; Evans does not always seem to have been well-served by his editors. It is only as the author seeks to explore the middle-ranking figures of Nazidom, and others even further down the food chain, that the book seems to go more into little-charted territory.
