Thomas > Recent Status Updates

This thing is kind of impenetrable, and not particularly interesting unless you're following along with a chart of the people Stalin executed. I'm not. Useful reference work, but soul-crushingly uninteresting to read. Provides too little context to make any sense except as a detailed catalog of crimes, with the context provided elsewhere (e.g., the same author's Stalin biography).

So far, this book starts too slow and has too little history, too much narrative hand-waving. I could give a damn about your random intelligence operative and the Israelis profiled and their stupid romance and courtship and marriage. I don't care. I don't need popular writers to "humanize" history for me. People who do should be reading romance novels. Get to the history and politics, already! Enough game-playing!

Pretty wonderful so far.

Once in a lifetime a book comes along that is the best MFing thing ever. Apparently that is this book.

So far, this is freakin' incredible.