Gorbachev: His Life and Times (signed)

Taubman, William

ISBN 10: 0393647013 / ISBN 13: 9780393647013

Edité par W. W. Norton & Company, 2017

A propos de cet article

W.W. Norton, 2017. Hardcover. First edition. Book and dust jacket condition: new. First edition, first printing. Brand new, fine unread copy. Signed by William Taubman in Washington D.C. on September 25, 2017. Ships to United States only.

N° de réf. du vendeur ABE-1662025943416

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Gorbachev: His Life and Times (signed)
• Éditeur: W. W. Norton & Company
• Date de parution: 2017
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0393647013
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780393647013
• Reliure: Hardcover
• Édition: 1st Edition
• État de l'article: New
• État de la jaquette: New
• Signé: Signed by Author(s)

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR was one of the world's two superpowers. By 1989, his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism, and had made enemies of radicals on the right and left. By 1990 he, more than anyone else, had ended the Cold War, and in 1991, after barely escaping from a coup attempt, he unintentionally presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union he had tried to save. In the first comprehensive biography of the final Soviet leader, William Taubman shows how a peasant boy became the Soviet system's gravedigger, how he clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down, how he found common ground with America's arch-conservative president Ronald Reagan, and how he permitted the USSR and its East European empire to break apart without using force to preserve them. Throughout, Taubman portrays the many sides of Gorbachev's unique character that, by Gorbachev's own admission, make him "difficult to understand." Was he in fact a truly great leader, or was he brought low in the end by his own shortcomings, as well as by the unyielding forces he faced?

Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself, transcripts and documents from the Russian archives, and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries, as well as foreign leaders, Taubman's intensely personal portrait extends to Gorbachev's remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved, and to the family that they raised together. Nuanced and poignant, yet unsparing and honest, this sweeping account has all the amplitude of a great Russian novel.

À propos de l?auteur

William Taubman is the Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Amherst College. His book, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of McNamara at War: A New History and Gorbachev: His Life and Times. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.