On this week’s episode of my podcast, I Have to Ask, I spoke with Stephen Kotkin, a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union who has just published the massive second volume of his Joseph Stalin ...

It’s unusual for two masterpieces to appear within less than a year of each other on a subject that has already been pored over by countless writers from nearly every angle. That has now happened with ...

As there is little to record about Stalin that is not political, this brilliant and fascinating volume is in effect a full-fledged "life and times." The author has devoted many years to studying the ...

For all the blood on his hands, Josef Stalin is indisputably one of the most important historical figures of the 20 th century. But where many biographers agree with Leon Trotsky's waspish dismissal ...

In the last 200 years the idea of will has gone from the most admired philosophical concept to the most maligned. Pulling yourself up by the bootstraps seemed the only way to go for Beethoven. Now we ...

Even before it became the IT capital of India, Bangalore was the least left-wing of Indian cities. When it was merely a cantonment town, it exuded an air of placid contentment; that air is now ...

Here is a life-and-times biography in the grand style: deeply researched, well written, brimming with interpretations. Oxford historian Service, author of an acclaimed biography of Lenin, provides the ...