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Paperback

Published: May 2008
Ships: 7 to 10 business days
RRP $24.99
$18.40
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Booktopia Comments

It wasn't mentioned in the book description below but the book comes with 32 pages of photos of people and places, obviously black and white as they are from the time of Stalin. They also include some replicas of documents or headlines from some newspapers. The book really focuses, as the title suggests, on the early years of Stalin and it will give any student of history a greater insight in to one of the most influential figures of the 20th Century.

Book Description

Stalin remains one of the creators of our world - like Hitler, the personification of evil. Yet Stalin hid his past and remains mysterious.

This enthralling biography that reads like a thriller finally unveils the secret but extraordinary journey of the Georgian cobbler's son who became the Red Tsar. What forms such a merciless psychopath and consummate politician? Was he illegitimate? Did he owe everything to his mother - was she whore or saint? Was he a Tsarist agent or Lenin's chief gangster? Was he to blame for his wife's premature death? If he really missed the 1917 Revolution, how did he emerge so powerful?

Born in poverty, exceptional in his studies, this charismatic but dangerous boy was hailed as a romantic poet, trained as a priest, but found his mission as fanatical revolutionary. The secret world of Joseph Conrad-style terrorism was Stalin's natural habitat, where he charmed his future courtiers, made the enemies he later liquidated, and abandoned his many mistresses and children.

Montefiore shows how the murderous paranoia and gangsterism of the criminal underworld, combined with pitiless ideology, taught Stalin how to triumph in the Kremlin.

Author Biography: Simon Sebag Montefiore's books are international bestsellers in 27 languages.Catherine the Great and Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper, and Marsh Biography Prizes. Stalin won the History Book of the Year Prize at the 2004 British Book Awards. Montefiore is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, novelist, and TV presenter, he lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children. He is now writing Jerusalem: The Biography.

?this terrific and terrifying biography of the years to 1917.? [THE INDEPENDENT]It shares with its predecessor (STALIN THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR) the virtues of fine prose, empathy with a rich range of characters and narrative of great ability. [Ross Leckie, THE TIMES]brilliantly readable history of Stalin?..Sebag Montefiore's re-creation of the world in which his subject's picaresque career unfolded is wonderfully detailed and convincing, and the portrait he paints of an egotistical monster in the making is unforgettable. [Pick of the Week in THE SUNDAY TIMES]this lively and accomplished account of Stalin's "gangsterish", pre-revolutionary youth, which draws on material from newly opened archives. [THE GUARDIAN]bring[ing] to life the unnerving 'young man with the burning eyes' [THE OBSERVER]

ISBN: 9780753823798
ISBN-10: 0753823799
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 480
Published: May 2008
Dimensions (cm): 19.8 x 12.9  x 3.0
Weight (kg): 0.435