Stalin: the court of the red tsar (1st American ed.)

This widely acclaimed biography provides a vivid and riveting account of Stalin and his courtierskillers, fanatics, women, and childrenduring the terrifying decades of his supreme power.

In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research and narrative ?lan, Simon Sebag Montefiore gives us the everyday details of a monstrous life.We see Stalin playing his deadly game of power and paranoia at debauched dinners at Black Sea villas and in the apartments of the Kremlin.

We witness first-hand how the dictator and his magnates carried out the Great Terror and the war against the Nazis, and how their families lived in this secret world of fear, betrayal, murder, and sexual degeneracy.

Montefiore gives an unprecedented understanding of Stalins dictatorship, and a Stalin as human and complicated as he is brutal.From the Trade Paperback edition.