To the Finland Station


Book Description

Presents a critical and historical study of European writers and theorists of Socialism in the one hundred fifty years leading to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and discusses European socialism, anarchism, and theories of revolution.




Lenin on the Train


Book Description

"A gripping, meticulously researched account of Lenin's fateful rail journey from Zurich to Petrograd, where he ignited the Russian Revolution and forever changed the world. In April 1917, as the Russian Tsar Nicholas II's abdication sent shockwaves across war-torn Europe, the future leader of the Bolshevik revolution Vladimir Lenin was far away, exiled in Zurich. When the news reached him, Lenin immediately resolved to return to Petrograd and lead the revolt. But to get there, he would have to cross Germany, which meant accepting help from the deadliest of Russia's adversaries. Germany saw an opportunity to further destabilize Russia by allowing Lenin and his small group of revolutionaries to return. Now, drawing on a dazzling array of sources and never-before-seen archival material, renowned historian Catherine Merridale provides a riveting, nuanced account of this enormously consequential journey--the train ride that changed the world--as well as the underground conspiracy and subterfuge that went into making it happen. Writing with the same insight and formidable intelligence that distinguished her earlier works, she brings to life a world of counter-espionage and intrigue, wartime desperation, illicit finance, and misguided utopianism. This was the moment when the Russian Revolution became Soviet, the genesis of a system of tyranny and faith that changed the course of Russia's history forever and transformed the international political climate"--




Patriotic Gore


Book Description

Regarded by many critics as Edmund Wilson's greatest book, Patriotic Gore brilliantly portrays the vast political, spiritual, and material crisis of the Civil War as reflected in the lives and writings of some thirty representative Americans.




Classics and Commercials


Book Description

Classics and Commercials: A Literary Chronicle of the Forties showcases Edmund Wilson's critical writings spanning decades and continents. Many of these essays first appeared in the New Yorker. Here is Wilson on Jane Austen, Thackeray, Edith Wharton, Tolstoy, Swift (the classics) as well as brilliant observations on Poe, H.P Lovecraft, detective stories, and other commercial literature. This wide-ranging study from one of the most influential man of letters demonstrates Wilson's supreme skills as both literary and cultural critic.




Edmund Wilson


Book Description

From the Jazz Age through the McCarthy era, Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) stood at the center of the American cultural scene. In his own youth a crucial champion of the young Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wilson went on to write three classics of literary and intellectual history (Axel's Castle, To the Finland Station, and Patriotic Gore), searching reportage, and criticism that has outlasted many of its subjects. Wilson documented his unruly private life--a formative love affair with Edna St. Vincent Millay, a tempestuous marriage to Mary McCarthy, and volatile friendships with Fitzgerald and Vladimir Nabokov, among others--in openly erotic fiction and journals, but Lewis Dabney is the first writer to integrate the life and work. Dabney traces the critic's intellectual development, from son of small-town New Jersey gentry to America's last great renaissance man, a deep commentator on everything from the Russian classics to Native American rituals to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Along the way, Dabney shows why Wilson was and has remained--in his cosmopolitanism and trenchant nonconformity--a model for young writers and intellectuals, as well as the favorite critic of the general reader. Edmund Wilson will be recognized as the lasting biography of this brilliant man whose life reflected so much of the cultural, social, and human experience of a turbulent century.




The Feud


Book Description

"In 1940 Edmund Wilson was the undisputed big dog of American letters. Vladimir Nabokov was a near-penniless Russian exile seeking asylum in the States. Wilson became a mentor to Nabokov, introducing him to every editor of note, assigning reviews for The New Republic, engineering a Guggenheim. Their intimate friendship blossomed over a shared interest in all things Russian, ruffled a bit by political disagreements. But then came Lolita, and suddenly Nabokov was the big (and very rich) dog. Finally the feud erupted in full when Nabokov published his hugely footnoted and virtually unreadable literal translation of Pushkin's famously untranslatable verse novel Eugene Onegin. Wilson attacked his friend's translation with hammer and tong in the New York Review of Books. Nabokov counterattacked in the same publication. Back and forth the increasingly aggressive letters volleyed until their friendship was reduced to ashes by the narcissism of small differences"--




Retreat from the Finland Station


Book Description

In examining the lives of leading revolutionaries - Nicolai Bukharin, Milovan Djilas, Imre Nagy, and Alexander Dubcek - and writers - Andre Gide, Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, and even the young Alexander Solzhenitsyn - who became prisoners rather than masters of the bloodshed their adherence to socialism seemed to unleash, Murphy reveals to us the terrible moral consequences they suffered as their faith in socialism crumbled. He compellingly shows how their idealistic vision spawned a world of want, anger, terror, and death. For blind obedience to the socialist cause allowed the new state to perpetuate, indeed to incarnate, the violence out of which it was born. In so doing, the idea of revolutionary liberty was devoured. Freedom surrendered to Stalinist terror, political innocence to Communist corruption, eloquence to the silence of the gulag.




A Piece of My Mind


Book Description

From the author of To the Finland Station comes a deeply personal and incisive memoir, A Piece of My Mind. Edmund Wilson, often considered to be the greatest American literary critic of the twentieth century, reflects back on life in his sixth decade with this insightful intellectual autobiography that covers topics ranging from Religion, War, the USA, Europe, Russia, Jews, Education, Science, Sex, and much more, all examined with his characteristic wit and intelligence.




The Sixties


Book Description

The last of Edmund Wilson's posthumously published journals turned out to be one of his major books, The Sixties: the Last Journal, 1960–1972--a personal history that is also brilliant social comedy and an anatomy of the times. Wilson catches the flavor of an international elite -- Stravinsky, Auden, Andre Malraux, and Isaiah Berlin -- as well as the New York literati and the Kennedy White House, but he never strays too far from the common life, whether noting the routines of his normal neighbors or the struggle of his own aging. "Candor and intelligence come through on every page--in this always absorbing journal by perhaps the last great man of American letters." - Kirkus Reviews




Lenin


Book Description

From a highly distinguished author on the subject, this biography is an excellent scholarly introduction to one of the key figures of the Russian Revolution and post-Tsarist Russia. Not only does it make use of archive material made newly available in the glasnost and post-Soviet eras, it re-examines traditional sources as well, providing an original interpretation of Lenin's life and historical importance. Focal points of this study are: Lenin's revolutionary ascetic personality how he exploited culture, education and propaganda his relationship to Marxism his changing class analysis of Russia his 'populist' instincts. A prominent figure at the forefront of debates on the Russina revolution, Read makes sure that Lenin remains in his place as a highly influential and significant figure of the recent past.