Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky

Biographies & Memoirs

Bertrand M. Patenaude

Leaders & Notable People

FABER

Stalin's Nemesis

Faber and Faber

The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921

When a devastating famine descended on Bolshevik Russia in 1921, the United States responded with a massive two-year relief mission that battled starvation and disease, and saved millions of lives. The nearly 300 American relief workers were the first outsiders to break through Russia’s isolation, and to witness and record the strange new phenomenon of Russia’s Bolshevism. This epic tale is related here as a sprawling American adventure story, largely derived from the diaries, memoirs, and letters of the American participants, who were a colorful mix of former doughboys, cowboys, and college boys hungry for adventure in the wake of the Great War. The story is told in an anecdotal, even novelistic, style that is accessible to a broad readership. More than a fascinating historical narrative, the book serves as a political and social history of the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, and as a study of the roots of the fateful U.S.-Soviet rivalry that would dominate the second half of the twentieth century. The book’s opening section of chapters recounts the chronological story of the American mission to Bolshevik Russia, dubbed by those who served as the “Big Show in Bololand.” It is followed by sections which examine the personal triumphs and tragedies of the relief workers and of their beneficiaries; the political confrontations between these emissaries of American capitalism and the Bolshevik commissars, who struggled to gain control over the relief effort; and the unique American-Russian cultural encounter occasioned by the presence of the relief workers, who came into daily contact with all classes of society―from impoverished former aristocrats to the poorest peasants.

History

Americas

Stanford University Press

The remarkable collections of the Hoover Institution Archives are for the first time showcased for the reading public in a large-format, generously illustrated book. Drawing upon a vast trove of rare historical documents and artifacts, A Wealth of Ideas tells the story of the institution and its treasures. The result is a visually attractive, engagingly written, and altogether thought-provoking book that also stands as a work of quality scholarship.The subject matter is epic in scale, covering the great wars, revolutions, political and intellectual movements, and personalities of the twentieth century. The author, Bertrand Patenaude, has assembled an impressive cast of characters, including many of the most influential figures of the age, among them Woodrow Wilson and Leon Trotsky, Friedrich von Hayek and Henry Ford, Karl R. Popper and Joseph Goebbels, Chiang Kai-shek and Boris Pasternak, and Bertrand Russell and John Maynard Keynes. The book contains nearly 300 illustrations, including political posters, photographs, film stills, original artwork, typed and holograph public and private manuscripts, letters, and diaries.

A Wealth of Ideas: Revelations from the Hoover Institution Archives

Stanford General Books

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Books by Bertrand M. Patenaude