Only One Year – Svetlana Alliluyeva

This is an autobiography by the daughter of Stalin.  It covers one year of her life when she went from Moscow, to India, from where she defected, to Switzerland and finally to USA where she settled for a time.

The book was originally published in 1969 and was written for an American audience at a time when the Cold War was flourishing.  This events in this book may be true but I take Alliluyeva’s view of them with a pinch of salt. She isn’t going to portray her life in USSR as a good one to a US audience and she is going to try to show altruistic motives for the actions she took.

Looking at even a simple Wikipedia biography after reading the book there are some clear inconsistencies in the book; I’m sure it’s a simple oversight to forget to mention your third husband and of course your son and daughter will remain loving and caring when you’ve abandoned them in the Soviet Union and fled to USA.

Cynicism and scepticism out of the way though this is an interesting book.  It can’t have been easy having Joseph Stalin for a parent and it must have been an uneasy time living through the de-Stalinisation programmes of the 1950s and 60s, wondering what the outcome might be for you and your family.

It’s interesting to contrast the different styles of living between USSR, India, Switzerland and USA.  Clearly as a new immigrant Alliluyeva isn’t going to describe USA in negative terms but the descriptions are interesting.

It was also interesting to read descriptions of friends both in Soviet Union and USA.  She clearly had plenty of them.  The Soviet ones read like those of a rebellious teenager; ones her father was likely to disapprove of!  The ones outside the USSR could, if one were cynical, be described as largely people who could see some political or material advantage in being able to say they were friends with Stalin’s daughter.

Looking at biographies, rather than this autobiography, Svetlana Alliluyeva seems to have been a restless person, never really settling anywhere, never really belonging.  I feel some sympathy towards her for that.

I would like to respect her for her courage in defecting to the West in 1969. But, having read this book, a little voice at the back of my brain is asking “was this another teenage-style rebellion? Was it to become an important person again?”

Overall, it’s an interesting view of one person living through the Cold War having seen both sides of the fence. And I still feel conflicted over how much I believe.

Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain

This isn’t my usual sort of book but it was recommended to me so I thought I’d give it a whirl.  The sub-title of the book is “adventures in the culinary underbelly” and it is a sort of autobiography into how Anthony Bourdain got into cooking.

I have to start by saying that Bourdain comes across as an arrogant prat in the book.  He isn’t someone I’d want to meet.  However, his obvious and genuine love of good food makes the book readable and at no point did I consider not finishing it, despite throwing the book across the room a few times!

This is a classic tale of someone finding their purpose in life quite by chance; a friend was sick of Bourdain sponging off him and others so found him a job as a dishwasher.  From dishwasher to food prep and hey presto something clicked.

The early part of the book tells of the author’s fairly privileged upbringing and then his life spiralling out of control through drugs and bad career choices.  It then moves on to a clean Anthony and his rise as a renowned chef.

The book doesn’t hesitate to describe the appalling things that happen in restaurant kitchens, which is a bit off-putting to someone who regularly eats out!  It also helps you to understand how professional kitchens work and to understand what you should and shouldn’t order and when from a restaurant menu.

I probably won’t read any other books by Anthony Bourdain but, on the whole, I’m pleased I read this one.

Fire and Fury; inside the Trump White House – Michael Wolff

Yes, I succumbed and read “that” book!

For anyone who hasn’t heard the furore the book has generated, this is a book about Trump’s presidential campaign and his first nine months as President of USA.

The book purports to have been written with the cooperation of Trump insiders.  It attempts to define Trump’s personal style and to show the chaos this creates via the bitter in-fighting between the various factions within the Trump White House.

Wolff describes the three camps as being centred around Steve Bannon, Jarred and Ivanka Kushner and Reince Priebus.  It was interesting reading about these groups knowing that neither Steve Bannon nor Reince Priebus still work for Trump.

The book suggests that Trump and his campaign team didn’t expect to win the presidency, that Trump didn’t want to be President and isn’t interested in the day-to-day necessities of the job.  It also suggests that the various groups around the President are more interested in scoring points against each other than in presenting a unified view of the President and his policies.

I think that, like a lot of this type of book, this is a broad overview of what is likely to be happening.  The events are too close and current to be viewed rationally and clearly.  At this point we don’t know what will happen during the Trump Presidency, what the pivotal moments will be and how the presidency will end.  Only once the dust has settled will we be able to draw certain conclusions.

I take the book with a pinch of salt but, nonetheless, an interesting read.

 

The Unwinding; An inner history of the new America by George Packer

I have no idea how I have come to own this book.  I thought it had found its way into my pile of books to read after my partner had read it – it’s more his type of book than mine – but he disclaimed all knowledge of it and has just started reading it.

The dust jacket blurb says that this is a book about “the extraordinary story of what’s happened in America over the past 30 years” and a “panorama of the relentless breakdown of the American social compact over a generation”.  I would describe it as a social history, following a number of extraordinary people from 1978 to 2012.

The main strands are rural North Carolina, Youngstown, Washington DC, Florida and Silicon Valley.  There are guest appearances from Newt Gingrich, Sam Walton, Colin Powell and Oprah Winfrey.

The individual stories are a mixture of how people strove to rise about the poverty they grew up in, how they strove for political power or how they spotted n opportunity.  In some instances they succeeded and in others everything ended in abject failure.

The most powerful stories are those that follow through the whole book and for me the stand out story is that of the woman in Youngstown who after a number of struggles and set backs managed to make a difference to the city described as the capital of Rustbelt USA.

The strongest message of the book, and I think a global one, is that a lot of damage was done in the 1980s dismantling the checks and controls that held financial institutions to account.  What seemed at the time like a liberation from restrictive rules – and I worked in financial services at the time so I know – turned out to be like letting an addict loose in a chemist’s shop.  Quest for market share became a chase for greater and greater profit and led to greed, manipulation and subterfuge.

I don’t want to go back to the days when banks were austere and intimidating places but I feel they should be places where you make serious consideration of the commitment you are making when you take out a mortgage.

I don’t feel I have enough knowledge of USA to make a judgement on whether this book is accurate and/or makes sense in economic terms.  I did find it really interesting and it has made me think long and hard about what has happened in UK since 1978.  What has happened for the good and where I think we have lost something important in creating the society we have today.

I suspect a lot of the political turmoil we are seeing across the world stems back to quite a few of the topics covered in this book.

I enjoyed the book and I will search out some of George Packer’s other work.