RaveThe National InterestTaubman has done a masterful job of reminding us not only how complex a man Khrushchev was, but also how much blood he had on his hands, and what a wild ride it was in international relations while he was in power ... In extraordinary detail, Taubman describes Khrushchev as cunning, conniving and freewheeling; a man of stubborn nature and primitive instincts ... Throughout, Taubman makes a great deal of Khrushchev\'s contradictory instincts and his duality-giving us psychological insights to interpret Khrushchev\'s most outlandish and barbaric acts, and emphasizing the guilt he carried with him in consequence. He suggests that Khrushchev was both a man bent on personal survival and one possessed by self--deception. After several hundred pages, however, Nikita Khrushchev does not seem as complicated as Taubman suggests. He comes across not only as a master politician during his meteoric rise, but as a master manipulator as well, knowing perfectly well what he was doing while he was doing it.
