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Suggestion Box for Future Book Discussions ~

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JoanP:
Monuments Men is still experiencing waits at the Library...though not as long.  Patience!
Divorce Papers is of interest, except we've been warned not a good one for group discussion...

Frybabe, will add The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II  Denise Kiernan.  I wish you had read the book to determine if our readers would go for it.  They do seem to go for the WWII era though.  

David McCullough's name has come up recently - his The Greater Journey - Americans in Paris.
http://books.simonandschuster.com/Greater-Journey/David-McCullough/9781416571773/reading_group_guide

"From the 1820s to 1900, generations of Americans made the pioneering journey across the Atlantic on a mission of learning and accomplishment in the intellectual, scientific, and artistic capital of the western world: Paris. David McCullough tells the story of the generations of Americans whose struggles and discoveries in the City of Light set them on the path to high achievement..."

We've recently read and discussed this period as well.  Some may wish to continue, now that we are familiar with the names of the time...think Mary Cassatt...

marjifay:
Jonathan, re Simon Sebag's biography of Stalin, I just remember that the author said he was a great lover of literature and history, reading 500 pp per day.  He wrote poetry as a student.  And, sarcastically, that he loved history so much he felt he had to revise it.  He also said Stalin had a great singing voice, and his friends said he could have become a professional singer.  (My note:  too bad he didn't pursue that career!)  My notes also say "As far as being a likable person, he seems to have been so, at least to his friends. He liked to be around people and have fun. He liked children (but so did Hitler, they say). The author says the foundation of his power was not fear, but his charm. Which he  used to his benefit politically."

Re your mention of the poet who got himself into trouble for what he wrote about Stalin, an Amazon reader said, ""Stalin was extremely bright and amazingly well read. It is easy to see why he was offended by the poet Mandelstam's celebrated line in his "Ode to Stalin", about "His fat fingers" "slimy like slugs". Stalin surely regarded himself as an intellectual and this description as a dim-witted vulgarian could only wound him deeply."

I've meant to read Sebag's YOUNG STALIN which explains how "young Stalin became Stalin."  How he nearly became a priest but was driven away by excessively strict priests at his school, and turned to gang life and petty crime, and then to revolutionary beliefs from a hatred of Tsarist Russia.  A most interesting man.

I'm still reading the 800+ page Wilson biography by Scott Berg.  The Ian Kershaw book sounds interesting -- I'll look for it.

Marj

Dana:
Here is a poem by Stalin.  As the book says (Service's biography), not high art in translation, "but in the Georgian original it has a linguistic purity recognised by all."

The pinkish bud has opened,
Rushing to the pale-blue violet,
And, stirred by a light breeze,
The lily of the valley has bent over the grass.

The lark has sung in the dark blue,
Flying higher than the clouds,
And the sweet sounding nightingale
Has sung a song to children from the bushes.

Flower, oh my Georgia!
Let peace reign in my native land!
And may you, friends, make renowned
Our Motherland by study!

Jonathan:
Who can believe it? What a strange man. What a strange life. Finding inspiration in flowers and songbirds. It sent me off to look for more and found it in something TBR on my shelf: KOBA THE DREAD: A MEMOIR, A HISTORY, AND A MEDITATION ON STALIN AND HIS LEGACY, by Martin Amis, son of LUCKY JIM.

Yes, Stalin did win a scholarship to the Tiflis Theological Seminary, but 'was expelled, or he dropped out. Thereafter he became a full-time revolutionary.' p99

His poetry now takes on a different tone: 'Know that he who fell like ash to the earth/ Who long ago became enslaved/ Will rise again, winged with bright hope, Above the great mountains.' p99

Amis continues with: 'In 1921, with Stalin's full support, Lenin reannexed Georgia (which had been granted independence the year before) by invasion. Stalin went down south to attend a plenum of the new administration: his first visit for nine years. He addressed a group of railway workers and was heckled into silence with cries of "renegade" and "traitor."  At a later meeting he harangued the local Bolshevik leaders:

"You hens! You sons of asses! What is going on here? You must draw a white-hot iron over this Georgian land!...It seems to me you have already forgotten the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariot. You will have to break the wings of this Georgia! Let the blood of the petit bourgeois flow until they give up all their resistance! Impale them! Tear them apart." '  ( 99-100)

Koba was his self-adopted nickname, meaning something like Robin Hood.

And Hilter had dreams of being an artist, an architect!

Jonathan:
Both men must have discovered that their country called them.

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