Having been a middle schooler/high schooler in the 1960s, I remember hearing of Solzhenitsyn but did not comprehend what the situation was like in Russia. I have been studying and learning more about government systems. I realize I've not been reflecting upon the importance of what the Russian system of totalitarianism had done to its' people and possibly to the world. This book helped this western mind to get an inkling of what the 20th century was about and to begin to reflect on what I need to be about in the coming years.