Gorbachev: The Man and the System Book

The war [WWII] traumatized Khrushchev: It drove him to smoke and to drink; it commanded more attention in his memoirs than almost any other subject, but he couldn't bring himself to read others' war memoirs in retirement. Yet the same war added several more medals to his collection.

This was a well paced and meticulously researched biography that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. The lengthy section on the Cuban Missile Crisis was absolutely superb and the section on Khrushchev's downfall was equally superb and surprisingly sentimental ' enough to feel sorry for the man who unwittingly did more than anyone to bring the world to the brink of Nuclear War and left us with the disturbing legacy that is the Nuclear Arms race.

Nikita Khrushchev was born a hundred miles south of Moscow in April of 1894. He lived with his mother and grandparents during his youth while his father worked in the mines. When Khrushchev turned fifteen he traveled more than 200 miles to work alongside his father in the mines and continued as a miner for several years.

In 1914 came WWI. Khrushchev managed to avoid the fighting and joined the Communist Party in 1918. He then quickly rose through the ranks and became Stalin's man in charge of Moscow in the 1930's and then in Ukraine in the 1940's. During WWII he served as a commander and even fought at Stalingrad, though it horrified him.

Upon Stalin's death in 1953 Khrushchev assumed the leadership of the Soviet Union ' outmaneuvering the other shocked candidates. From the get go he aimed to distance himself from the famines of the Stalin era and to be more approachable with the people. But he also wanted to promote military prowess and especially technology. He was not known as much of a planner but under his leadership the Soviet Union of the 1950's did achieve quite a bit in weapons research and actually eclipsed the U.S. in the initial phase of the Space Race.

Khrushchev was the leader of the Soviet Union for twelve years ' the period we now consider to be the height of the Cold War. His reign ended less than two years after his humiliating capitulation to Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Politburo never forgave him for that embarrassment. He was forced into retirement and was stripped of his prized dacha on the Black Sea and his car. While he was given a pension, Khrushchev was not allowed to be written about it in the Soviet Press. He died six years later in 1971, a frustrated man.

5 stars. As far as biographies go this is about as good as it gets ' particularly for a subject that I initially had little interest in.