Mini Masallar: Çekmece Çekçek (Derli Toplu Olmak) - Şokuh Gasemnia itibaren Timaş Çocuk içinde LIT biçim

Jael Cruz cruzjael — The War That Never Was first came out in 1995, when a book of this nature was more in the line of 'current events' than 'history'. At that point in time, there were quite a lot of people around who were very willing to talk about the part they had played in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Editor and author David Pryce-Jones travelled around the former Soviet Union and its constituent republics, collecting interviews with politicians, bureaucrats, former dissidents, and political commentators who had been in at the end of things, as it were. Through these interviews, Pryce-Jones is attempting to piece together the greater puzzle of how one of the world's two superpowers simply fell apart in the space of less than a decade. I wish I had more to say about the book, but to be perfectly truthful I found it incredibly difficult to get through. My difficulties started off with bits of Pryce-Jones' running commentary that made me raise an eyebrow. Take, for instance, this passage: 'President Reagan and Mrs Thatcher were unusual among world leaders in their genuine detestation of communism. It was a question of right and wrong. Moral outlook of the sort troubled neither post-war French Presidents nor German Chancellors.' In my opinion, I would say that it's remarkably easy to make moral judgments when you're not facing either immediate internal (French) or external (German) pressure from native communist movements. I could keep quoting passages in a similarly conservative vein, ones where he damns the Helsinki Accords or snipes at President George H.W. Bush for not being more aggressive to act in support of the nationalist movements in the Baltic countries. In essence, he seems to think that if the Soviet Union was on its last legs by the late 1980s, the West would've been better off getting out the knives and finishing the job with more than a bit of relish. By the time I was halfway through the book, I was more than tempted to get out some knives of my own to hack and slash my way to the end. I'm honestly not sure if I'd even keep this book on my shelf. I've no problem with debating the different choices that might have been made by Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and others -- but Pryce-Jones seems to keep repeating a few pet ideas and picking only the interviews to support his views. It might be moderately useful to keep The War That Never Was as a representation of a particular kind of ideological mindset that shouldn't be ignored outright, but I can't imagine rereading except to pull quotations from it. And as far as that goes, I may simply end up copying out the quotes that I think I might find useful and consigning this polemic masquerading as history to a used book store.

Taneisheo Ferguson tferguson — I really enjoyed the story about Greg's work in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but felt that it could have been told in a better way. The writting was not great or very easy to follow and at times I had difficulties with some of his approach to his work and his political view points. It is an amazing story though and very insightful into the countries cultures.

Nuo Xu nokxu — I usually don't enjoy compilations of books, but this one surprised me. I especially liked "Down the Scum Quarter" but "the Lightning Bringer" really wasn't to my taste.

Ananya Neogi ananyaneogi — This was an okay book. It read fast. I have one more of this author's books. I will read it to kind of compare.