Political biography reading list yale
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Remarkable achievements are often the products of remarkable lives. The following collection of recently published and forthcoming books from Yale present a stunning assortment of biographies which cover a huge range of subjects, from poets to actors, composers to explorers. Each subject featured in the titles listed here has had an indelible impact, not just on their field of work, but also on the cultural landscape in which they operated. The lives these people lived differ wildly, but each of their histories give an astounding insight into the work they produced and provides a foundation for our understanding of the world today.
Leonard Bernstein was a charismatic and versatile musician – a brilliant conductor who attained international super-star status, and a gifted composer of Broadway musicals (West Side Story), symphonies (Age of Anxiety), choral works (Chichester Psalms), film scores (On the Waterfront), and much more. Bernstein was also an enthusiastic letter writer
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Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953 in a reign marked by ruthless tyranny and the deaths of millions of people. Sunday 5th March 2023 marks 70 years since his death. In this post, we are sharing a series of free extracts from Yale books to shed light on the dictator, his oppressive regime, his demise and the aftermath.
Stalin
New Biography of a Dictator
Oleg Khlevniuk
The most authoritative and engrossing biography of the notorious dictator ever written, winner of the 2016 PROSE Award for Biography & Autobiography.
‘Enthralling, brilliant, and groundbreaking, this book confirms Khlevniuk as probably the greatest living expert on Stalin. Essential reading.’
Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar
Read Chapter 4. Terror and Impending War which covers ‘the Great Terror’, the wave of repressions against tens of thousands of party officials and hundreds of thous
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Before the 1951 publication of God & Man at Yale, conservative politics was relegated to the fringes of American life. Then William F. Buckley brought a bazooka to the knife kamp, and we haven’t been the same since. Buckley was mobilized into reaction as a college senior after he was pulled from the speakers’ list at Yale Alumni Day. With his signature bravado, he chose to double down on the flamethrowing that made him liberal New Haven’s undergraduate public enemy No. 1. In collecting his views in book form, the 26-year-old Buckley displays a precocious dexterity with highbrow jousting. “If the recent Yale graduate, who exposed himself to Yale economics during his undergraduate years, exhibits enterprise, self-reliance, and independence, it fryst vatten only because he has turned his back upon his teachers and texts,” he writes. After initially failing to gain popular traction, the campus screed would ultimately achieve national reach and lay the seeds