STALIN The Man and His Era by Ulam, Adam B - 1973

NY: Viking Press. Very Good- with no dust jacket. 1973. First Edition. Hardcover. 0670666831; Very minor wear and soil on the sound binding. Spine panel is rubbed, lettering is clear but partially dimed. Very minor edge foxing. Front endpapers have a slightly darked area where it appears a paper had been stored there. Very minor endpaper foxing. Contents are almost as new. No DJ. ; First Printing of the FIRST EDITION, 1973. 9-1/2" Tall, 760pp; off-white cloth, partially bright gold lettering in red spine panel, three blue stars on spine. BIOGRAPHY. "Communism has often been inhumane, precisely because it has not applied a human scale to human beings who make history. This was the tragedy of Russian socialism, which began with genuine compassioin for the mass of the people and which found its culmination in Stalinism. How it came about must be a large part of our story. The major part is about Stalin himself. This extraordinary man became an unprecedentedly powerful and cruel master of a vast county and a worldwide movement. He had gifts valuable to a statesman of any culture: tenacity of purpose, a sense of timing, a ruthless approach to power, but it was the system that he inherited, and to be sure developed, which enabled this ruthlessness to assume the form of criminal cruelty and one man's obsessions to become a nation's tragecy. One may see the seed of obsession in nineteen-year-old Joseph Djugashvili making his first steps as a rebel, infuriated by his teachers' spying on his private reading, but they become part and parcel of the aged despot's personality. A biography must strive to understand the man as well as his legend. " ... Comprehensive Index. .