Khrushchev by Рой Медведев
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"[Khrushchev's] tireless activity confirmed that it was possible to change Soviet society from the top, given support from below."

I distinctly remember one morning in October 1964: my mother woke me up when it was time to go to school - I was a high-school freshman - yet instead of saying "Time to wake up!" she said "There is no Khrushchev any more..." During breakfast we listened to the radio: the speaker announced that Nikita Khrushchev was removed from all his posts and Leonid Brezhnev assumed the position of the First Secretary of the Soviet communist party - the supreme authority in the Soviet Union. Many readers these days will not know what Soviet Union was - one of the only two superpowers of that time, whose military might was equal to that of the United States, and whose thermonuclear weapons could annihilate all life on Earth. Any change in Soviet leadership was a momentous event that could affect every person in any country.

Roy Medvedev's Khrushchev (1982) is a great biography of the man who was the leader of Soviet Union for 11 years (1953 - 1964). The author, a famous Russian historian and political writer, is the twin brother of Zhores Medvedev whose Andropov I reviewed here two months ago. I like this biography much more: it is more detailed and rich in synthetic depth, probably because of the eighteen-year break between Khrushchev's disappearance from public life and this book's publication: the passage of time created a historical perspective.

The biography tracks Khrushchev's life from his hard-working youth in fields and mines, through service and political work in the Red Army, a string of promotions in the party structure crowned by becoming a candidate member of the Politburo in 1938. The author confirms Khrushchev's participation in the terror of Stalin's years - in those years party bosses simply had to order torture and murder of thousands of people, otherwise they were tortured and murdered themselves on other party bosses' orders - but does not provide any details.

During World War II about 25 million Soviet people died: several million because of the utter stupidity of the Supreme Leader (Stalin) who believed in his own infallibility and omnipotence, and further several million died with the Stalin's sacred name on their lips. Krushchev distinguished himself during his military service for his Fatherland and his Supreme Leader. While the events surrounding Stalin's death in 1953 are well known the author offers a detailed account of the power struggle that ensued. Khrushchev emerges victorious, assumes the top position in the party, and in February of 1956 gives the famous "Secret Speech" where he denounces Stalin for the long decades of his reign of terror: for massive repressions, tortures, and murders. In consequence several millions of prisoners have been liberated and mass rehabilitations of murdered or imprisoned people took place.

The author then presents a detailed - and totally captivating - account of Khrushchev's remaining years in power, from 1956 to 1964: the highpoints are the crises in Poland, Hungary, and Suez Canal, Khrushchev's visit to the United States in 1959, the Berlin crisis of 1961, the Cuban crisis of 1962, and the growing tensions between Soviet Union and China. I am planning to soon read and review books on these three last topics so I am not discussing them here.

There are fascinating passages in the text, for example, the account of Khrushchev's visit to Washington D.C, New York, Hollywood, and Iowa. The reader will certainly enjoy the few pages dedicated to Khrushchev's reactions to abstract art.

The discontent rising in the Soviet society in 1963-1964, the scarcity of goods, stagnant incomes, and the average party members' dissatisfaction with Khrushchev's methods and lack of results of his leadership created an environment where other members of the Soviet leadership decided to take matters in their hands and relieved Khrushchev of all his duties on that fateful day in October 1964.

Roy Medvedev's book is a fascinating political biography: a very highly recommended work.

Four-and-a-quarter stars.

View all my reviews

Slipping Into Darkness by Peter Blauner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"[...]it's the [...] weirdest case he ever heard of. [...] Girl's dead twenty years and her blood shows up on another body last week."

The setup of Peter Blauner's Slipping Into Darkness (2006) is indeed intriguing. Is the "girl" really dead? Did the murderer store her blood to leave it on another victim? Maybe the lab results are not correct? Another difficult review to write because one needs to be very careful not to divulge a spoiler. In fact, the readers who like the surprise factor in mystery/suspense/crime novels should not read the synopsis on the dust jacket - the publisher provides enough spoilers there. By the way, I have always been wondering why people want to know the entire plot, except perhaps the very last twist, before reading a mystery genre book?

The main part of the story takes place in 2003 but in a flashback to 20 years earlier we read an account of the interrogation of a murder suspect, a 17-year-old boy, conducted by Detective Francis X. Loughlin. The interrogation scenes are quite graphic as we witness the gradual breaking of the boy's willpower and resistance. The detective's maturity and experience make the terms of the duel quite uneven; the scene evokes images of a "duel" between a hunter armed with a high-power rifle and a deer tied to a tree trunk. Naturally, the boy is convicted of murder and sent to prison.

Now, 20 years later, the convicted murderer is released on technicality. While he is trying to have the conviction vacated, with the help of a streetwise lawyer working pro bono, Det. Loughlin is trying to put the murderer back behind the bars. The battle between the detective and the convict constitutes the main narrative axis of the plot. There is another murder and intriguing connections between the two cases emerge.

Unfortunately, as usual in the mystery genre, the plot gets less and less plausible as it unfolds. One of the best setups that I can remember slowly degenerates to become a disappointing denouement. The author uses some tired clichés of the genre, for instance, the 'rare disease cliché' or the sudden appearance of a person from the past. The penultimate conversation, instead of being powerful and dramatic as the author undoubtedly planned, sounds contrived and ridiculous.

On the plus side, there is a touching thread that involves Zana, a Kosovar young woman from Prishtinë. The reader will find some cool passages, for instance

"'Pretty sharp, lady,' he said.
'A lot of things become much more obvious in this world when you have a vagina.'
He nodded, acknowledging the universal truth of this [...]"

The author writes well, and the novel is very readable. Had the author conceived a solution worthy of the outstanding setup, it would have been an excellent novel of suspense. Even with all the implausibility I am recommending it.

Three stars.

View all my reviews

Ghosts by John Banville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"The past was gathering even more thickly around me, I waded through it numbly like a greased swimmer, waiting to feel the chill and the treacherous undertow."

It was not supposed to be like this. I would have never expected that I would have to struggle to get through a John Banville's book. Yet I did. It took me three weeks to read Ghosts (1993) and the first hundred pages were the most difficult. Despite Banville's trademarks, extraordinarily accomplished prose and the underlying wisdom shining through page after page, I could not connect with the text. I did not understand the events and the characters sounded artificial to me, like empty templates, promises of something that might possibly come in the future. For instance, Alice and Flora: what are they about? Why should I care about seven castaways from a ship grounded on a coast of an island? Or about their intersecting the lives of Professor Kreutznaer and his "faithful companion" Licht?

Later, things began making a little more sense. A connection to Banville's The Book of Evidence is revealed. The motif of a (fictitious) French painter, Vaublin, and his Le monde d'or emerges. There are more extraordinary passages of prose like

"The world was luminous around him. Everything shone out of itself, shaking in its own radiance. There was movement everywhere; even the most solid objects seemed to seethe, the table under his hands, the chair on which he sat, the very walls themselves. And he too trembled, as if his whole frame had been struck like a tuning fork against the hard, bright surface of things."

or

"And somehow by being suddenly herself like this she made the things around her be there too. In her, and in what she spoke, the world, the little world in which we sat, found its grounding and was realized. It was as if she had dropped a condensed drop of colour into the water of the world and the colour had spread and the outlines of things had sprung into bright relief."

The thread of travel with Billy, first to the narrator's house, then to the ship, and eventually to the island will captivate the reader's attention. As will the cool story about a mayor of a Spanish village sitting for a painting.

Naturally, I don't regret that I persevered and finished the novel. While I am probably too obtuse to fully comprehend its meaning, I suspect that the author gives the reader a hint in the following passage:

"I would look out the window and see that little band of castaways toiling up the road to the house and a door would open into another world. Oh, a little door, hardly enough for me to squeeze through, but a door, all the same."

The charming story of the narrator's relationship with Mrs. Vanden reminds me of Cees Nooteboom, to me the best writer of literature for adults. Still, the beauty of prose remains the best aspect of Ghosts: Mr. Banville makes a worthy companion to James Joyce, Patrick White, or Vladimir Nabokov among the most accomplished masters of the English language. I still have a lot more Banville to read.

Three stars.


View all my reviews

Murder at the B-School by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"The kid was floating facedown in the whirlpool, naked, suspended at forty-five degrees in a limp, looming bird-of-prey pose. The whirlpool's circle of underwater seats had caught his toes."

As a college professor I like to read detective or mystery fiction with university-themed plots. Alas, it is very hard to find good novels in this genre. The beginning of Jeffrey Cruikshank's Murder at the B-School (2004) promises a lot: indeed the first chapters kept me glued to the book. But soon the plot lost its edge and already by page 55 I began turning the pages faster and faster wishing the book to end as soon as possible.

The dead kid floating in the whirlpool is Eric MacInnes, a third-year student at the Harvard Business School, heir of a very rich family. Captain Barbara Brouillard, also known as "Ms. Biz" for her no-nonsense, competent handling of cases, leads the investigation. The main character in the novel is Dr. Wim Vermeer, a fourth-year faculty, as yet untenured, in the business school. In the disgustingly cliché literary trick, Barbara and Wim conduct parallel investigations. This way, the author attempts to have both a police procedural and a novel describing tribulations of a young faculty at a prestigious university. Naturally, this does not work.

The struggles of an untenured assistant professor are portrayed with a degree of accuracy. No wonder: the author is a real-life professor in the Harvard Business School, and a distinguished author of books in his field of research. He knows the university environment inside out and he writes very well. Unfortunately - and that's the problem with 90% of all mystery books - while the author has a great idea for the setup of the novel the denouement falls way short of this reader's hopes. The novel has a particularly lame ending - I almost cursed out loud when reading the last fifty pages or so. Implausible and ridiculous are the tamest words that come to my mind considering that Dr. Cruikshank is a famous academician.

And now the worst: there are several totally incongruous passages in the novel that seemed like copied from some other book or advertising brochure. Just consider this:

"The Acura NSX, real green, with two seats and an excess of swooping body angles [...] there was the front seat, which urged you into a semirecumbent position. And once ignited, the car made two noises at once: a throb and a whine. When you stepped on the gas, the throb got bigger and the whine got higher. And because the engine was right behind you, almost square in the middle of the car, it seemed to be taunting you, behind your back. Egging you on."

And what about the passage about flying in old planes? Or the very long and touristy passages about visiting Puerto Rico? What are all these pages doing in this novel? And what is the relevance of the fact that Wim a descendant of the phenomenal 17th-century Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer? Dr. Cruikshank should know that an unusual, surprising literary component should eventually play some role in the plot.

To sum up: good, interesting bits about a young professor's ordeal at a famous university. As a mystery - almost complete failure, except for the beginning.

Two stars.



View all my reviews

Introduction to Probability: Second Revised Edition by Charles M. Grinstead
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"One may summarize these results by stating that one should not get drunk in more than two dimensions."

The above is the most extraordinary sentence one can find in a university textbook on advanced mathematics! Charles M. Grinstead's and J. Laurie Snell's Introduction to Probability (Second Edition, 1997) is indeed a most remarkable textbook, by far the best text that I have ever used in my almost 40 years of teaching undergraduate mathematics and computer science. Probability was my favorite field of mathematics during my own studies in the early 1970s, but I somehow avoided teaching it, most likely because I had not found a textbook that I really liked. Until Grinstead and Snell.

Standard textbooks heavily focus on the combinatorial aspects of probability, which do not interest me too much. When I teach the upper-division probability course I love to emphasize the calculus-based approach, particularly when it involves multidimensional calculus and its applications to joint probability distributions. Grinstead and Snell's approach is virtually tailor-made for my probability course.

The second factor that makes me love the textbook is the emphasis on random numbers and pseudo-random variables generation. Having worked in the field of mathematical modeling and simulation for over 40 years I believe this is a natural approach to ground the probability course in. Grinstead and Snell's geometry-based problems that use the cumulative distribution functions to find the densities are a wonderful teaching tool: the students can also appreciate the applications of calculus: many of my students seemed to like discovering the connections.

Yet another great feature of the textbook is its emphasis on the moment generating function. Naturally, it is used to prove the Central Limit Theorem, the fundamental theorem of probability and the foundation of statistics. I follow the mathematical argument in class every time I teach the course so that math majors can appreciate a little more elaborate proof than the usual toy ones.

I also love the inclusion of a chapter of random walks (from which the epigraph is taken). When teaching partial differential equations (another of my favorite fields in math) I often discuss the Tour du Wino method of numerically solving the Laplace equation, which uses the random walks approach. The authors provide the famous proof by Pólya, which shows that a random walk must eventually return to the origin in one or two dimensions, but not necessarily for higher dimensions.

Of many other nice features of the textbook I should mention the authors' clear treatment of the Bayes' Theorem and the fascinating Historical Remarks that accompany many chapters. A truly wonderful book! The best textbook I have ever used!

Five stars.


View all my reviews

The Final Deduction by Rex Stout
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"As I helped myself to clams I held my breath because if you smell them, mixed with shallots, chives, chervil, mushrooms, bread crumbs, sherry, and dry white wine, you take so many that you don't leave enough room for the duckling roasted in cider with Spanish sauce as revised by Wolfe and Fritz, leaving out the carrot and parsley and putting anchovies in."

Ms. Althea Vail, a rich socialite and a retired actress, offers Nero Wolfe an exorbitant fee if he manages to get her kidnapped husband back, alive and unharmed. She disobeys the kidnappers' orders received in a ransom letter. In a somewhat unusual twist, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin accomplish an impressive feat of detection already by page 16 of the novel. The Final Deduction (1961) is the 35th installment in the celebrated series by Rex Stout. (Interestingly, the paperback I have gives the date of copyright as 1955, which is hardly possible as a 1961 Heron sedan appears in the story.)

The plot involves another serious crime and poor Archie Goodwin has to endure extensive interrogations by state police and the district attorney. Yet all that pales in comparison with what happens on page 56 of the Bantam House paperback:

"I had my coat on and the door open. He crossed the sill, and as I followed I shut the door. As we descended the stoop I asked, 'The car?' and he said no, and at the bottom he turned right, toward Ninth Avenue."

Yes, as incredible as it may seem, Wolfe walks away from his house!!!

Another cool passage in the novel involves a situation when Wolfe knows what Archie will do before, in fact, Archie knows what he will do. The "perfect harmony" of knowing each other well is a recurring theme in this novel. There is also some language humor as in the following fragment:

"As I rolled the paper in Wolfe's voice came at my back.
'Dendrobium chrysotoxum for Miss Gillard and Laelia purpurata for Doctor Vollmer. Tomorrow.'
'Right. And Sitassia readia for you and Transcriptum underwoodum for me.' I hit the keys."

With its unusual focus on Wolfe-Goodwin relationship The Final Deduction avoids the cloying familiarity of characters in a long-running series of novels: it could have been one of the better books in the series. Alas I find the denouement totally ridiculous: the way Wolfe arrives at his final deduction and exposes the murderer is, to put it mildly, implausible. One of the weakest Rex Stout's endings that I can remember. So the rating for this quite interesting read is only

Two-and-three-quarter stars.


View all my reviews