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Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Character Stalin believed in things for which there was no evidence. Stalin disbelieved in things for which there was evidence. When reality did not agree with his mind, Stalin became paranoid, believing that people were trying to trick him. Stalin had difficulty owning up to his own mistakes, and instead blamed others. Stalin blamed saboteurs and wreckers for the failings of the socialist sys

Young Stalin  by Simon Sebag Montefiore, Vintage, 2008.  Georgian Born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili in Georgia in the Caucasus, he went by several other names, including Stalin (means steel in Russian), and also Koba, diminutive of Jacob Yakob, a character in the novel “The Patricide” by Alexander Kazbegi; Jacob Yakob was a Caucassian bandit-hero who fought against the Russians. Bank Robberies Stalin’s gangs robbed banks, stole arms from arsenals, and conducted assassinat

Lost Prophet : The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin  by John D'Emilio, Free Press, 2010.  Bayard Rustin Rustin began not in the civil-rights movement, but rather in the pacifist movement of the early twentieth century. Black American soldiers coming back from the end of World War II were upset that although they had fought for the freedom of others they themselves were not free in racist America. This was part of the genesis of the early civil rights movement.  Civil Rights Mo

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World  by David W. Anthony, Princeton University Press, 2010.  Domestication of the Horse This book describes how human being domesticated the horse. The people who spoke the proto-Indo-Europeans language are called the Yamnaya. The Yamnaya lived between 4500 and 2500 years BCE. They were descendants of hunter-gatherers who lived in the Eurasian steppes, north of the Black an

The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al-Qaeda  by Yaroslav Trofimov, Anchor, 2008.  Saudi Royal Family During the second half of the twentieth century, the Saudi royal family developed some liberalizing trends: the outlawing of slavery in 1962, tolerance of Shias living in the eastern part of the Arabian peninsula, the importation of foreign infidels to work in the oil industry, alcohol, cigarettes, television and cinemas showi

The Arab Mind  by Raphael Patai, Hatherleigh Press Paperback, 2002.  The Arabs raise boys and girls in different ways. Boys are pampered and spoiled, girls are not. Girl babies are often ignored when they cry, but not boy babies. An Arab man’s status depends primarily on how well he protects the chastity of the women in his family. The sense of time in the Arab world is much more vague than in the West. The Arab believes that not he but God determines what will happen to him

Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism  by Dore Gold, Regnery Publishing, 2003.  Wahhabism Dore Gold describes the origin of Wahhabism. The founder of Wahhabi Islam, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, lived in the early 18th century in a village a little north of Riyadh on the Najd plateau. At that time, there was mutual respect between the four schools of Suni Islam (Shafii, Hanbali, Hanafi, Malaki). Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab changed that. He declared t

Lawrence in Arabia  by Scott Anderson, Doubleday Paperback, 2013.  Archaeologist T. E. Lawrence was an archaeologist by profession. When working in the Middle East before World War I, he learned Arabic and also much about the Arabs. When World War I started, he became an officer in the British army. He understood the situation on the ground better than any of the British career officers in the Middle East. Although some of the British diplomats and army officers saw him as a

Kristallnacht  by Martin Gilbert, HarperCollins, 2006.  Assassination November 7, 1938: Herschel Grünspan shot diplomat Ernst vom Rath at the German embassy in Paris. Hitler used this act as an excuse to punish the Jews in Germany and Austria. Broken Windows Windows of Jewish shops were broken (crystal night). Arson against many Jewish synagogues. Mobs looted Jewish businesses and homes. Jewish hospitals, schools, old age homes and orphanages were also attacked. Many crimes w

Up From Slavery  by Booker T. Washington, Skyhorse Publishing, 2015.  Self-Improvement If anyone ever pulled himself up with his own bootstraps, it was Booker T. Washington. He was born a slave on a farm in Virginia in 18556, into a very poor family. He educated himself, then educated others. He founded and ran the famous Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee Alabama in 1881.  He taught students to become teachers. His educational emphasis was on technical educ

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression  by Amity Shlaes, Jonathan Cape, 2007.  Gold Confiscation One of the issues Shlaes discusses is the gold standard. During the Great Depression, the federal government took several actions to weaken the gold standard. The most famous was the order that private citizens were no longer allowed to own gold, except in very small amounts, such as jewelry. Everyone had to turn in their gold and receive paper dollars in return.

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History  by S. C. Gwynne, Scribner, 2010.  Comanches The Comanche Indians were buffalo (bison) hunters on horseback in the southern United States during the nineteenth century. The Comanche dominated the other Indians in the Southwest: Apaches, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Kiowas, Shawnees, Sioux, Tonkawas, Wichitas. Most of the early history of the indigenous

The Worst Hard Time  by Timothy Egan, Houghton Mifflin, 2006.  Southern Great Plains This book talks about a time in the early twentieth century when the weather turned dry and farmers in the Southern Great Plains (Texas panhandle, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado) suffered. The author begins with a discussion of the background of the region, of how the white man and cattle displaced the bison and Indians (Comanches, Kowa, Kowa-Apache, Querecho and Cherokee). Wheat Farmers In the e

My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience  by Rian Malan, Grove Press, 2009.  The Boers of South Africa This memoir was written before the end of apartheid. The author’s ancestors were Boers, also called Afrikaners, descendants of the Dutch colonists of southern Africa. Boer stock was the most racist segment of South African society. The author describes how brutally his ancestors, the Boers, treated blacks. The Boers

Thread of the Silkworm  by Iris Chang, Basic Books, 1996.  Deporting Genius Chang tells the story of a rocket scientist, Tsien Hsue-Shen, who was born in China in 1911 and educated in the United States. He left China in 1935 to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During World War II, he worked with Hungarian engineer Theodore von Kármán at the California Institute of Technology and helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. During the 1950s, the United States

Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag  by Armando Valladares, Encounter Books, 2001. Arrest and Imprisonment Armando Valladares was arrested 28 December 1960. The Political Police presented no evidence of a genuine crime committed by Armando Valladares. His political crime was refusing to praise Communism when asked to do so. He was held in La Cabaña in Havana and the Isla de Pinos. He spent 22 years, 1960-1982, as a political prisoner in Cuba. He was released

The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957  by Frank Dikötter, Bloomsbury Press, 2013.  Land Reform Prior to the Communist takeover, ownership of farmland had been very egalitarian. The exploitation of the Chinese peasants by feudal landlords was mostly an imaginary problem. There was little feudalism or serfdom in China before the Communists took over. There were only mild inequalities in land ownership. Land reform was a solution to a non-exist

Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday , Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.  Goals Mao Zedong had two goals: (1) Becoming dictator of China (2) Making China into a nuclear superpower Acquiring Power Mao Zedong acquired political power with help from Joseph Stalin. Mao was also an expert at removing his rivals. In particular, any rival who advocated paying attention to reality was accused of secretly being a capitalist roader. Arming China Mao achieved his second goal by us

Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe  by Adam Zamoyski, HarperPress, 2008. Russian Civil War During the Russian Civil War, just after World War I, when the Communist Red Army was fighting the White Army in the East and South, Lenin tried to spread his Bolshevik revolution westward into Poland. The Red Army greatly outnumbered the Polish Army. Nevertheless, Lenin was stopped by the Polish Army, lead by Jozef Pilsudski. This book makes it clear that Europe owes a grea

Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him  by Donald Rayfield, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2005. Felix...