the book is written like a thriller and sometimes it is easy to forget that everything is thruth. a great read! also very well reseached ( )

This book was tremendously readable at the same time that it provided enormous detail -- some newly uncovered -- on the complicated person that Stalin was. It was very well researched -- the footnotes were as absorbing as the main text. ( )

Montefiore interviewed on Young Stalin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnu9U3... ( )

This is the best biography I've read in a long time. I didn't know much about Stalin and had only basic knowledge of Russian history before I started, but Montefiore's book leaves me hungry for more.

The book begins with an excellent "hook," describing a sensational bank robbery Stalin perpetrated in Tiflis, Georgia. It's also very well researched, with lots of endnotes and footnotes (but no so many footnotes as to distract from the text). Even better, it's written in such a way that the characters, even the peripheral ones, come alive. I had no idea there were so many colorful characters in the dying Russian Empire! Surprisingly, many passages were excruciatingly funny, such as the description of Stalin's "pet psychopath" Kamo, feigning insanity to the point where he actually became insane.

I would HIGHLY recommend this book, even if you're not all that interested in Stalin or Russia. (After all, I wasn't.) ( )

If the U.K publicity's to be believed, then Young Stalin is a wild, bodice-ripping romp tinged with political intrigue. Well, the young Stalin did indeed live an exciting, adventure-packed life, but Simon Sebag Montefiore's retelling is more sedate and scholarly than advertised. This is not his fault. Viewed in a more academic light, this big book is interesting, informative and extremely well-written.

Dictator Fact of the Day: Did you know Stalin used to be a weatherman? ( )