Trotsky: The Downfall of a Revolutionary Hero - Hardcover

Patenaude, Bertrand M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060820683 ISBN 13: 9780060820688

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2009

Synopsis

The author offers the dramatic story of Leon Trotsky's final years in exile in Mexico and the light they shed on one of the most captivating and controversial figures in modern history. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

"Well researched and vividly told." -- Robert Service, The Guardian

"Well researched and vividly told." -- --Robert Service, The Guardian

"Excellent, exciting. . . . "Trotsky" charts, with novelistic flair and in archival detail, the progress of the plot that culminated in Trotsky being killed with an ice axe in 1940."--Simon Sebag Montefiore, "The Sunday Telegraph"

"This book deepens and enhances the sense of tragedy that always attends contemplation of 'the Old Man' and his last struggle."--Christopher Hitchens

Bertrand Patenaude tells a masterly story, of a brilliant, cornered man and, along the way, of a misguided century. --"The Wall Street Journal""

Excellent, exciting. . . . "Trotsky" charts, with novelistic flair and in archival detail, the progress of the plot that culminated in Trotsky being killed with an ice axe in 1940. --Simon Sebag Montefiore, "The Sunday Telegraph""

This book deepens and enhances the sense of tragedy that always attends contemplation of the Old Man and his last struggle. --Christopher Hitchens"

An absorbing reconstruction of Trotsky s last years in Mexico. . . . Patenaude s hyrbrid history and detective story grips from start to finish. With rare narrative verve, he chronicles the last years of a revolutionary s life, with its sexual jealousies, paranoia, and finally murder. --Ian Thomson, "The Sunday Times""

Well researched and vividly told. --Robert Service, "The Guardian""

A captivating account. . . . Patenaude paints a vivid portrait of Trotsky, a flamboyant, Westernized intellectual. . . . This is a dramatic, event-filled portrait of a turbulent, half forgotten era. ----"Publishers Weekly" (starred review)"

From the Back Cover:

Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much passion, controversy, and curiosity as Leon Trotsky. Trotsky was that rare combination of the man of ideas and the man of action. His role in history—his epic rise and fall, his fiery persona, his violent end in Mexico in August 1940—holds a fascination that transcends the history of the Russian Revolution. Based on extensive firsthand research, this groundbreaking biography examines Trotsky's remarkable life from the perspective of his last exile in Mexico.

Bertrand M. Patenaude masterfully interweaves the story of Trotsky's final years in Mexico with flashbacks to pivotal episodes in his career as a young Marxist, revolutionary hero, Red Army chief, Bolshevik leader, outcast from Stalin's USSR, and ultimately heretic of the Kremlin, targeted for assassination by its secret police. He vividly recounts the contentious Dewey Commission hearings and the passionate debates among liberals and Communists in the United States and Europe over the Moscow Trials and the charges made against Trotsky.

Drawing on Trotsky's private correspondence and diaries, as well as the testimonies of his American bodyguards and secretaries, Patenaude sheds new light on Trotsky's tumultuous friendship with painter Diego Rivera; his affair with Rivera's wife, Frida Kahlo; and his torment as his family and comrades became victims of the Great Terror. Patenaude also turns to KGB files to document Stalin's efforts to eliminate the man he considered his nemesis—including a failed commando raid on Trotsky's home three months before his death.

Gripping and tragic, Trotsky brilliantly illuminates the fateful and dramatic life of one of history's most captivating and important figures.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0060820683
• ISBN 13: 9780060820688
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 370