Richard Lourie

"Richard Lourie, who translated Sakharov's memoirs, has now written the first full biography of this towering figure of the last century. Drawing on a wide range of sources - including previously secret KGB files, as well as Sakharov's own correspondence - Lourie tells the story of a life intimately bound up with Soviet history. With the H-bomb, Sakharov made the Soviet Union a superpower; with his courage and his moral conviction, he made it accountable to the world for its treatment of its citizens. His untimely death in December 1989 cut short a budding career as a politician, for at the end of his life, Sakharov had been elected to the Congress of People's Deputies and was engaged in a campaign to reform the Soviet constitution.". "As a scientist, Sakharov not only helped change the world through the creation of thermo-nuclear weapons, he also engaged in theoretical research whose ultimate significance is yet to be determined. As a Russian, he has been ranked by his own people with Lenin and Stalin in terms of his influence on the country. As a human being, he set a standard for principled dissent and compassion acknowledged the world over."--BOOK JACKET.

"Leon Trotsky is trying to kill me." With these words - a paranoid lie - we are drawn into the mind responsible for some of the twentieth century's most horrifying crimes. As the Autobiography of Joseph Stalin opens, Stalin is anxious and infuriated. Trotsky, in axile in Mexico City, is writing a biography of Stalin, and the book is a double threat. Not only does it promise character assassination but it may offer proof of a secret crime so heinous that its discovery might force Stalin from power. Stalin and Trotsky had long before reached a point where the guiding motive of each man's life was the others destruction. What will Trotsky disclose before Stalin's hand reaches him? Mesmerizing, terrifying, and at times comical - The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin is a journey into the very heart of evil. Stalin takes us deeper and deeper into his life and the labyrinth of his psyche until we finally are alone with him.

An account of the search for the killer of fifty-three Soviet citizens describes how Russian Chief Inspector Issa Kostoev searched for the man who sexually mutilated, killed, and cannibalized his victims.

352 pages

A fictionalized memoir of Stalin of Russia, the greatest dictator of the 20th century. A budding poet with a talent for organizing, he learned violence from his shoemaker father, while a stint in a seminary to study for the priesthood convinced him God did not exist. After that, there was no limit to his ruthlessness.

Analyse : Roman historique.