Book Description
Bertrand Russell was born in 1872 and died in 1970. One of the most influential figures of the 20th century, he transformed philosophy and can lay claim to being one of the greatest philosophers of all time. He was a Nobel Prize winner for Literature and was imprisoned several times as a result of his pacifism. His views on religion, education, sex, politics and many other topics made him one of the most read and revered writers of the age. He also wrote this book, one of the most compelling and vivid autobiographies ever written.
Now available in a single paperback, this edition of Russell's Autobiography includes an introduction by scholar Michael Foot exploring the status of this classic nearly 30 years after the publication of its last volume.
Customer Reviews:
The Hobo Philosopher.......2007-09-09
I am a big fan of Bertrand Russell but this book has been difficult for me. It is very long and very wordy. It contains lots and lots of the details of Russell's personal life - a lot of letters from everybody. I've had the book for a few years now and I am still reading it. As they say, autobiographies are never objective. I love to talk about myself too but wow! I enjoyed Mark Twain's and Clarence Darrow's autobiographies a heck of a lot more. I paid good money for this book and I intend to finish it - one day.
Unless you are especially intrigued by autobiographies or Mr. Russell, I would say that Bertrand has many other books that you might enjoy more.
One of the Great Autobiographies in the English Language!!.......2005-03-17
+++++
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind...Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth."
This is how philosopher Bertrand Russell's (1872 to 1970) autobiography begins. This book (first published in three separate volumes) is brilliantly and simply written, emotionally charged, witty and wise, honest, and historically interesting. It spans almost a century of social and intellectual change. I would say that it is one of the great autobiographies in the English language from a man who was a towering intellectual and humanitarian figure of the twentieth century. As well, this book confirms why Russell, who authored more than seventy-five books, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.
His prize according to the official Nobel Prize internet site was awarded "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."
Throughout his book, Russell describes his philosophical disputes and quarrels, his rise to honors, his many friendships with high profile people, and his religious and social self-questioning. He was a maverick that stuck to his convictions even if they got him into trouble (he was jailed at age 46 and again at 88). He never failed to stand up and be counted on any matter that stirred his conscience and ideals.
A highlight of this book is that it includes the actual letters between Lord or Earl Russell and a long list of influential people of his time (many whose names are easily recognized today) at the end of each chapter. As well, illustrations (mainly in the form of black and white photographs) are found throughout.
Even though this autobiography is to me brutally honest (for example, "I used to...watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not...commit suicide because I wished to know more of mathematics"), I felt that Russell was holding back on revealing certain aspects of his life.
Finally, the last words in Russell's autobiography are found in the postscript:
"I have lived in the pursuit of vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, and for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe."
In conclusion, be sure to read this autobiography and learn more about this extraordinary and unique man!!
(first published 1967-1969; acknowledgements; introduction; 17 chapters; postscript; main narrative of 730 pages; index)
+++++
A first-class philosopher, a second- class human being .......2005-02-06
For most reviewers Bertrand Russell's cruelty in a number of his personal relationships, especially with women is a minor motif of a very extraordinary life. I understand that point -of- view. There is so so much in Russell's life and thought that inspires admiration. He is by all accounts a great philosopher. He was a truly masterful writer, and his 'History of Western Philosophy'did the seeming impossible and made reading about the subject interesting and entertaining. Russell was a maverick and went his own way in the world of political thought. He may have been a fool when it came to Communism but he surely was right to see the dangers of a nuclear world, and courageous to fight against them. His zest for life, his ability to appreciate and enjoy so many things in life is certainly an admirable quality. He wrote with vigor and clarity and often great wit and humor. He could recognize the value of others, as for instance in his championing of Wittgenstein. He did seem deeply disturbed by human suffering and care deeply to somehow lessen it. Yet the personal cruelty stands strongly against him, and he would seem to join a long list including Marx and Gandhi of ' cruel humanitarians' . His atheism too disturbs me because he shows so little emotional understanding of the needs of religious believers. Russell was very thin and that thinness seems to me to somehow capture something of his essence, also his prose. He lacks a certain complexity, a certain kind of depth that comes in going deeper inside the heart and soul. He was a very great thinker, and writer but I do not believe that as a human being he had the highest kind of feeling and understanding for others. Perhaps one of the greatest 'flat characters'of the twentieth century, a century which also had a few 'rounded ones' of greater human complexity and intensity.
A Model Autobiography.......2003-11-13
Considering that Russell lived such a long life, and an eventful one, and that this book (a compilation of three volumes) covers most of it, it's a long one. But eminently worth it.
As always, Russell's style is brilliant. Simple yet deep, elegant and unadorned, always fresh and looking at things objectively yet with deep feeling.
The book is always informative, engaging, and frequently hilarious.
One of the nicer things about the book is the inclusion of some letters from others. Usually these are luminaries. The one from Will Durant, together with Russell's curt rejoinder, is marvelous.
Russell has the knack of taking what could become boastful incidents--his imprisonment for objecting to WWI, his hair-breadth escape when his plane went down near Norway in WWII--and turning them into humorous, self-effacing ones.
He also has the knack of talking about horrendous personal difficulties in a way that is objective and nonjudgmental.
Gossipy, passionate, and thoughtful........2001-07-09
One gets the impression, as one reads the brilliant character sketches Russell draws of the scholars and lords and ladies who made up his circle of aquaintances, that the English upper class was mostly mad, scoundrels, or geniuses, with a fair amount of overlap. (The author as an outstanding case in point.) The keenness of Russell's insight into character, vivid descriptions, and eye for the absurd, make many passages of this book a delight. "My advice to anyone who wishes to write is to know the very best literature by heart, and ignore the rest as completely as possible." "The past is an aweful God, though he gives life almost the whole of its haunting beauty." "(Plato's) austerity in matters of art pleases me, for it does not seem to be the easy condemnation that comes from the Phillistine." Reading Why I am Not a Christian ..., I got the impression that he had a gloomy outlook on life. But here, I often found great joy in poetry, nature, and the wonder of life. "I had never, till that moment, heard of Blake, and the poem affected me so much that I became dizzy and had to lean against the wall." Tempered, however, by morbid thoughts, and fear of insanity.
One of the odder aspects of the book to me was Russell's "idealism." On one page, he speaks of a mystical experience in which gave him a universal compassion for all mankind: on the very next page, he relates how he "fell out of love" with his wife, and then, how he ditched her. Passing from the same Bodhissattva-like musings elsewhere, he relates, on the next page or so, how he tried to strangle a friend in a rage. He can be sympathetic and even kind, but for a would-be Boddhisattva and fighter for the rights of women, he seems to have hurt a lot of ladies, in particular, rather badly. Yet his friendships in general, with both sexes, seem warm and affectionate.
I docked the book a star because the version I bought (Bantom) seemed dishonest in its packaging. The front and back covers show an old man, though this version only covers the period to 1914. On the back cover, it promises "more exciting episodes than most novels, details more intimate than most exposes, and more intensity of emotion than most fiction writers would dare ascribe to a single hero." Largely hype. This is not Dumas, or Augustine. It's a different kind of story.
Someone else on the back cover calls Russell "a Genius-Saint." Genius, maybe, but the second accolade implies very low standards for sainthood. The book did make me think Russell a more balanced figure than I thought. But part of that balance appears to have been something like madness, and something like cruelty. Intellectually, Russell was a brilliant man. Emotionally, he often strikes me as a lonely and bewildered child, angry at being abandoned, not sure where to look for love, and not sure how to give it.
author, Jesus and the Religions of Man
Book Description
In the second half of his life, Bertrand Russell transformed himself from a major philosopher, whose work was intelligible to a small elite, into a political activist and popular writer, known to millions throughout the world. Yet his life is the tragic story of a man who believed in a modern, rational approach to life and who, though his ideas guided popular opinion throughout the twentieth century, lost everything.
Russell's views on marriage, religion, education, and politics attracted legions of devoted followers and, at the same time, provoked harsh attacks from every direction. On the one hand, he was stripped of his post at New York's City College because he was thought to be a bad influence on his students, and on the other, he was awarded the Order of Merit, the Nobel Prize in literature, and a lifetime Fellowship of Trinity College, Cambridge. He lived to be ninety-seven, and as he became older he became increasingly controversial. Monk quotes Russell's telegrams to Kennedy and Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis, an influence that Russell and his followers believed tipped the balance toward peace. Russell devoted his last years to a campaign organized by his secretary to lend support to Che Guevara's call for a globally coordinated revolutionary struggle against "U.S. imperialism." Until now, this last campaign has been misunderstood as a -- perhaps misguided, but nevertheless innocent -- plea for world peace. Monk reveals it was no such thing.
Drawing on thousands of documents collected at the Russell archives in Canada, Monk steers through the turbulence of Russell's public activities, scrutinizing his sometimes paradoxical and often outrageous pronouncements. Monk's focus, however, is on the tragedy of Russell's personal life, and in revealing this inner drama Monk has relied heavily on the cooperation of Russell's surviving relatives and access to previously unexamined legal and private correspondence. A central player in Russell's life was his first son, John. Russell applied the methods of the new science of child psychology in his parenting, believing that a new generation of children could be reared to be "independent, fearless, and free." But instead of being a model of this new generation, John became anxious, withdrawn, and eventually schizophrenic. Nor was John's daughter Lucy (who was Russell's favorite grandchild) to be a model of the new generation; gradually she grew so emotionally disturbed that, at the age of twenty-six, she took her own life.
The Ghost of Madness completes the most searching examination yet published of Bertrand Russell's unique life and work. Together with Ray Monk's highly praised first volume of the biography, The Spirit of Solitude, this is the classic account of an extraordinary man who championed the great ideas of the twentieth century and was all but destroyed by them. It is a portrait of the mind of a century.
Customer Reviews:
Thanks Ray!.......2007-02-11
Having read "Wittgenstein", then vol 1 of this biography, this was a natural and exciting follower. I certainly have to wonder what connection there is to a life associated, at least ab initio, with mathematics and failure in one's personal life. Considering the connection between logic, mathematics, and reasoning, and our need for success with those to be successful in one's life in general, this certainly brings up an issue of a golden mean between extremes. It perhaps also brings up an issue of autism and the genetic predisposition to autism as a range of autism might on one hand lead to outstanding mathematical accomplishment accompanied by outstanding social failure.
It is such a shame that such a great mind would give up such important work for lack of - self discipline? Self control? A family madness? Most telling I thought was the quote given in response to the question "Why did you give up philosophy?" Since his response is shocking but stabs to the heart of the personal difficulties experienced by BR and successfully passed on to almost all of his children and grandchildren one has to wonder was this nurture or nature. A clue seems to be the success of those who had the earliest and longest break in contact. The less contact the more success?
Perhaps an errata sheet should be made available regarding the apparent deleted words. One sentence especially seemed to need "not" to make sense in context, but in general I found my reading to be abruptly halted with the awareness of a word missing - in a context where I could know precisely what word would have been right. I half wonder if RM was using a new word processor or something? I did not notice this at all with vol. 1.
Regardless, of all the things worth reading this will always be high on my recommend list. Great philosophers are easier to understand when we know as much as we can about them as persons. Thanks Ray! Eternally grateful.
Autobiography vs. biography.......2003-10-31
Because of Russell's political views (his opposition to war and U.S. imperialism) he has always been the subject of attacks by other intellectuals (the late Sidney Hook is a prime example). One only has to compare Monk's work on Russell to his biography of Wittgenstein ("The Duty of Genius" says it all). The interesting thing about each of Monk's biographies is that while both men led solitary lives and maintained erratic beliefs and behavior, Russell is castigated as a "madman" while Wittgenstein is a "genius." It is far too easy as a biographer to portray intellectual celebrities as either geniuses or madman. If you want to hear from the person, Bertie Russell, read his biography instead.
A tormented volcanic island who spilled a lot of lavae.......2003-05-17
This exceptional book is a sequel to The Spirit of Solitude, written by Ray Amok, which covers the first 50 years of Russell's life, and which could be summarized by achieving world fame and academic glory by means of his early work as a philosophical mathematician, specially trough his "Principia Matematica",a monumental theoretical work, with the co-authorship of Whitehead.
Ray Monk magistrally portrays Russell as facing now the challenge of taking a new direction to his life, trying to achieve the same level of academical glory when entering into new fields of knowledge. The story is of a genius who had to prove to himself that he had not lost his intelectual vigour in the ageing proccess and at the same time , balancing his mundane needs trough popular texts written to readers not specialized in philosophy and mathematics, and many other areas where he was proficient.
He marriages now for the second time in his life, with Dora, with he would generate a son (John) and a daughter (Kate), began for him a new era as an educator and as a mass-comunicator, where he approached all the available means (newspapers, magazines, radio panels and lectures) in order to make money thus providing the material means for his special ideas on how to educate his children. He wrote many books on the subject and even inaugurated a special school where his two children where educated along with the children of some upper-class Englishmen and Americans.
He was two be married again twice and to have more children with Peter (yes, a very special nickname of his third wive). In terms of the outcome he got, it was nothing anyone could foresee at the beginning.
To sum it up, the book is a faithful portrait of a tormented man, surrounded by all kinds of people who loved/hated him, and who seems to destroy every inch of happiness one could have before getting to know him. Strange as it seems, the man who was trying to save the world with his pacifist stand against nazism, and later comunism, and all forms of totalitarianism, was incapable of understand the human nature of all people who lived with him.
This is a good book to read to everyone interested in philosophy and in the life of the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.
Remarkable biography........2002-08-27
The chilling story of Bertrand Russell's disastrous later life: his ferocious battles with his children, wives and mistresses, his financial needs covered by second-rate newspaper articles and American lectures for older women, his sometimes quite naive political struggles on the side of socialism (all land and capital must be the property of the State) and the peace movement. At the end of his life, he allowed himself to be totally neutralized by an American CIA agent (I quote Bryan Magee). For the author, the reason for these disasters were two fundamental traits of Russell's character: a deep seated fear of madness (a constant in his family) and a quite colossal vanity.
The big shock of his life was the destructive First World War. He became a profound misanthrope, who lost all confidence in humanity. It put nearly an end to all serious philisophical and mathematical work.
Thoroughly documented and extremely well narrated work. The author is very good acquainted with philosophy and mathematics. I miss one name in this provoking work: Karl Popper.
Painful revelations for Russell lovers.......2002-05-23
I wanted to name my son "Russell" (if I had a son), at one point. In college and (philosophy) grad school I was a tremendous admirer of Russell, in particular his "On Denoting" and other explications of how language and logic works. As a college student in the late '60s I was also impressed and influenced by his staunch (and early) opposition to the Viet Nam war.
So reading The Ghost of Madness was a sad revelation. I had already read, with great enjoyment, Monk's Duty of Genius and Spirit of Solitude, but this volume took me quite a while to get through, cause on nearly every page there was another revelation of Russell's pettiness, and just-plain-meanness, especially to his schizophrenic son and granddaughter, Lucy.
Monk's other 2 main works deserve 5 stars, this one one less cause he lost any semblance of an "objective" biographer's stance (I know I know "objectivity" is problematic...), starting with the preface and acknowledgements.
Book Description
A survey such as this by one of the world's leading thinkers of his entire philosophical canon, is clearly as important as it is fascinating. It is a masterpiece of philosophical autobiography.
Customer Reviews:
A thought-provoking book.......2005-04-03
My favorite book by Russell. A very personal account of how he was led to abandon Hegel by a focus on relations which led to the vision of what Philosophy is that is taught in all American universities.
Customer Reviews:
The Unique Russell.......2000-10-13
Anti-catholic, pro-jewish, and maybe the most important brain of our corrupt, insane, and bygone 20th century, Russell speaks for a generation that is starting to realize certain inviolable truths vital to the continuation of mankind. Doomed as we are, cynical as I am, and one-hundred per cent correct Russell is when stating human nature is actually corrigible. For when this aspect is fixed, and humans will no longer emulate quasi-virus patterns and replicate wars over and over, only then can Russell be judged as right or wrong regarding the fate of man. What is peace? What is war? What is knowledge? I consider Russell the king of intellectual snobs.
Amazon.com
Volume I of Ray Monk's life of Bertrand Russell is a penetrating and highly critical portrait of one of this century's most influential intellectual figures. Monk's talents as a writer and his knowledge of philosophy produce clear and lucid prose that is sophisticated in its understanding, yet doesn't shy away from the dishy details that make the book compelling. This initial volume takes us through the first fifty years of Russell's private, public, and intellectual life. We follow Russell through his boyhood and schooling, his two marriages and countless love affairs, his friendships with eminent intellectuals such as Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot (plus an affair with Eliot's wife Vivien), and the members of the Bloomsbury Group, up to the birth of Russell's son in 1921. The inner Russell is tumultuous, fighting off fears of madness, and full of insatiable longings. We also see Russell's public life: his outspoken commitment to pacifism which ultimately led to his imprisonment, as well as his early advocacy and later disillusionment with socialism. Ray Monk is particularly adept at explicating Russell's philosophy: his desire to bring an end to interminable philosophical debates by developing new techniques for the logical analysis of philosophical problems. In Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Monk demonstrated that cracking good stories exist in the arcana of academic philosophy and in the lives of philosophers. The vastness of Russell's life and the breadth of his interests, in addition to the brilliance of his mind, makes Monk's story all the more captivating.
Customer Reviews:
Reaching an overwhelming sense of the man.......2006-06-29
This is simply amazing. Not only did BR write a thorough journal, but his friends, lovers, and associates, and their friends, lovers, and associates did too. And letters from all to all practically! We come to a sense of understanding BR et al better than they knew themselves. More: this has everything to do with the philosophy of BR. I wouldn't have believed it and often I feel wonderment about why we needed to know "that", good grief, when low and behold, there is the connection with the work. Had it not been for the life BR lived we would not have his work. It is enough to make you certain that our paradigm - learn the history of the man to understand him - is certainly a winning paradigm because of what it shows. It also encourages me to reflect on my own life. How can one read so intensely into the life of another without it having such an effect? Thoughts like: remember this! It was just so. BR expresses it so well. And Ray Monk does such a good job making it accessible, certainly having found it reliving the life of BR from the philosophers point of view as well as the lovers and students. Since I have also read Wittgenstein, I loved the cross over and the record of the various steps in their relationship felt the richer for having read both. Life is great when you have great books like this on a beautiful summer evening.
An idealist mathematician turned sceptic.......2004-09-07
The first part of Ray Monk's outstanding biography of Bertrand Russell centres more on his love life than on his philosophical or political evolution.
It shows us a restless Russell, fearing (hereditary) madness and becoming a real womanizer after the break-up of his first marriage.
The number of letters which Russell wrote to his (ex-)lovers is truly amazing and Ray Monk quotes profusely from them.
The reactions of the husband of Ottoline Morrell, Russell's lifelong friend and most important mistress, shows that apparently promiscuity in the British High Society was not a problem.
On the philosophical front, Ray Monk doesn't explain very clearly Russell's essential logical discoveries (see B. Magee - Confessions of a philosopher). On the other hand, the importance of Peano's work, his clashes with Wittgenstein (who torpedoed a big part of Russell's work) and D.H. Lawrence (for Russell, a fascist) as well as his questioning of G. Frege (whose work was annihilated by one question by Russell) are very well documented.
Politically, Russell became a utopian socialist (no private property, which was the source of all evil) and later a real liberal fighting for universal suffrage also for women.
A key event in his life was the outbreak of WWI. It shattered definitively his trust in mankind. He became a sceptic and a convinced pacifist for the rest of his life.
Although I found that there were too many love letter excerpts in this book, it remains a fascinating read.
One of the most brilliantly significant books Ever written!.......2003-11-04
This is one of the most stimulating, dazzling, intellectually satisfying, strangely comforting books that I have ever read.
As an academic myself, devoted to the lonely quest for truth, this book was strangely comforting, as I could empathise with some of the struggles Bertrand Russell endured.
This book (along with Lance Armstrong's "It's not about the Bike" and Dag Hammarskjold's "Markings") is very important to me. By reading the many excerpts it includes of Russell's letters and diaries, I have come across many stunningly phrased morsels of eloquence - yes, Russell's behaviour is sometimes horrifying, yet rather than this make the book unpleasant, it actually made it a learning experience. I learnt things about humanity that were meaningful to me, and I experienced (and learnt from) the many exquisite phrases.
Any negativity concerning Russell's character was, from my perspective, *completely* eclipsed by the rewarding, educating and intellectually and emotionally intense experience of reading this remarkable book.
I do not that often discover books that are very meaningful and brilliant; I would be very happy if over the next few years I accidentally stumble upon a *handful* of books that measure up to the standards that my current favourites have achieved. Until then I will just have to re-read my favourites.
(I found this book so dense with insight that I actually started a file on my computer where I type notes from this biography concerning ideas and phrases that were particularly interesting/beautiful.)
A biography the size of the Bertrand Russell.......2003-07-02
Strange as it may seem, I began to read this book after reading its sequel, but got the same good impression of it all, because what counts most is both the stature of Bertrand Russel and the way it is portrayed by Ray Monk.
"The Spirit of Solitude" is simply fascinating, covering the years Russell dedicated to the philosophy of Mathematics, a subject that is so complex, that completely absorved him, causing his first marriage to collapse amidst great personnal pain to his wife, making Russell to seek love comfort with women who could fulfill the maternal absence to a man who lost both his parents when a child. The pressure exerted upon him by his grandmother is also elucidative on the ways he chose to mantain his personall life amid a curtain of secrecy, something instrumental in his future evolution as a philosopher.
The apex of his career was hit when he published, along with Whithehead, the voluminous Principia Mathematica, a 4.500 pages book, which took some 10 years of his best efforts, and which was dedicated to the foundations of philosophical thinking in Mathematics. It was such a difficult book to read that even Russell expected that no more than a handfull of great mathematicians could read and understand what was there meant.
This book is a must for everyone interested in Philosophy and the philosophy of mathematical thinking.
The Best Russell Bio To Date.......2000-12-19
Question: How would Ray Monk follow his wildly successful biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein? Answer: He takes on the life of Wittgenstein's teacher, and the most public philosopher of the 20th century, Bertrand Russell.
There are a myriad of biographies of Russell in and out of print; even the most ardent Russell admirer could easily admit burnout on this score. Russell himself penned an autobiography that lends itself more to literature than fact. Why should one spend money and time on yet another biography?
Two reasons should suffice, I hope. Monk is a thorough biographer, but not an adoring one. Although some others have also been critical, none brings to the subject the background in analytical philosophy that Monk does, and this is an important factor when discussing the life and thought of a philosopher, for both are obviously and subtly interwined in the subject.
Secondly, Russell was more than an academic philosopher, he was a public figure who was more well known than his philosophy. His life was lived in the pages of the press and made great fodder for the newshounds. Whether it was his many love affairs (including a disastrous one with poet T.S. Eliot's unstable wife Vivian) or his peace campaign during the first World War that led to his jailing by the English government, Russell always made good copy. Monk takes the reader behind the headlines to the events and forces that shaped the young Russell's life and philosophy. His partnership with Alfred North Whitehead in the co-authorship of Principia Mathematica is expertly handled, as is Russell's later dalliance with the Bloomsbury Group.
This is the first of two projected volumes and I can't wait to read Part Two.
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Bertrand Russell (Modern masters)
A. J. Ayer
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
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Binding: Hardcover
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Wittgenstein
ASIN: 0670158992 |
Customer Reviews:
clear and illuminating.......2002-03-09
Excellent discussion of Russell's philosophical logic. Discussion of epistemology is a bit less lucid. Highly recommend overall.
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Bertrand Russell: A Life
Caroline Moorehead
Manufacturer: Sinclair-Stevenson,
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 185619180X |
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A story of the Gulag........2007-07-18
This is a true story of the Gulag. Gustav Herling was arrested because he fled across an international boundary and the Russians suspected he was related to Hermann Goring. Of course this was crazy. At the time, Russia was allied with Germany, and Herling was fleeing the Nazis. His one and half years in a Gulag camp in the Artic north is featured in this story. He relates how prisoners were sapped of their energy and then died. The prominent theme was the hunger of the prisoners. They were slowly starved to death. Other stories relate the one or two days a year the prisoners were given off, the disgraced NKVD prisoners and their fate, and the cultural activities.
This is an interesting read. This is not for the feint of heart. Murder, rape, hunger, and the loss of humanity were what happened in the camps. Herling portrays this vividly in this book. The book blasts the system of slave labor in the Soviet Union.
A different look at the GULAG.......2006-12-21
I first read The Gulag Archipelago when I was in middle school, and it left a lasting impression. What I hadn't realized was there were other authors who had written about the subject before Solzhenitsyn.
Herling's book is a very readable introduction to life in the GULAG; he was a prisoner for eighteen months until he was released to work as part of the war effort. Told from a first-person perspective, it's not as detailed and doesn't present as many disparate views as The Gulag Archipelago but is still very interesting and enlightening.
It's especially recommended if you're curious about the subject and don't have the patience or the time to work through Solzhenitsyn's works.
Brutal and startling account.......2006-11-16
The imagery in the book is not for the faint of heart. Its a brutal book - a study of the human condition when devoid of hope, set against impossible odds, and where a temporary relief from the pain may turn out to be an insufferable shock.
Its also a deeply moral book - that seeks to find answers to the most grotesque acts of depravity in the context of these acts... where a man's face cracking under the weight of boots may be the path to freedom.
A masterpiece yet to be discovered.......2005-02-03
Perhaps the best summary of this book comes from Bertrand Russell himself who wrote an introduction to the first English edition of "World Apart" in 1951: "Among the many books that I have read about experiences of the victims of the Soviet prisons and camps, the `World Apart' by Gustaw Herling impressed me the most and is best written. This book possesses very rarely seen power of simple and lively narrative and it is completely impossible to question anywhere his truthfulness."
In spite of this testimony from one of the greatest intellectuals of the XX Century, the book did not enjoy much recognition for many years. Even today, more than half a century after its publication, this masterpiece still remains in relative obscurity, save the Herling's native Poland. It is an example of a thing done by "a wrong guy at the wrong time in the wrong place". Czeslaw Milosz explained that condition somewhat like this: After the war Gustaw Herling was known more for his service in the Polish Army of Wladyslaw Anders considered at the time, especially in France and Italy, as Fascist and the book was clearly anti-Soviet. At the same time the prevailing mood, especially among the left-leaning intellectuals was decisively pro-Soviet. After all the Soviet Union was an Ally who played decisive role in the defeat of the Nazi Germany.
The true nature of the Soviet system was not fully revealed and acknowledged until the publication of Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (1963) and, more importantly, "The Gulag Archipelago" (1974). Important as these works are, however, the testimony of Herling preceded them by more than a decade and it is the first, as far as I can tell, in depth account of the reality of Soviet system. Unfortunately the works by Solzhenitsyn did not do much good to redeeming this book's value. Perhaps, they even overshadowed it.
The "World Apart" is an account of the real events that happened during Herling's "tenure" in the camps of Kargopole in the deep North of the Soviet Union. And the real were the people he wrote about. But this book is not merely an account of these unspeakable events. Herling goes much further. He offers his analysis of "what happened how and why". And he offers the portraits of people describing what can happen to a man under the conditions of extreme terror, cold, hunger and overwork. It is a warning to all those "homegrown moralists" who in the comforts of their secure existence in freedom feel in their rights to pass judgments on others regardless of circumstances they really know nothing about.
However horrific were the events described and however terrible was what happened to and with the people in the camps the overall "climate", if you will, of this book is not altogether gloomy. While not concealing what happened with the inmates in terms of their own behavior, Gustaw Herling refrains very consistently from passing judgments on them. The inmates were ordinary people and their misery, including sometimes complete moral disintegration and loss of dignity, was inflicted upon them and they were the victims. One cannot demand impossible from others and cannot expect something he had not proven capable of delivering himself.
But his judgment of the nature of the Soviet system itself is unmistakable and uncompromising. It is astonishing that even today while there is hardly any confusion as to the nature of the Nazism, there is still much ignorance, misunderstanding and under-appreciation for the evils of Communism, including it's most degraded Stalinist brand. "World Apart" by Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski fully deserves to be recognized as one of the most in-depth, original analysis of the nature of the Soviet system (and beyond) and is a genuine masterpiece of the literature of the XX Century. If there is a work that this book should be compared to it is Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Notes from the Underground".
Recommended.......2000-09-05
A World Apart is reminiscent of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. Where A Day in the Life... is defined by a mood of monotony and despair, A World Apart provides greater detail in the events defining the two year prison existence of Gustaw Herling.
The book is beautifully written and completely unsentimental. There are no lessons in the power of the human spirit. It is the men who do not cling to hope who have a chance of survival. Hope means recognizing the obliqueness of the present situation. This knowledge is what brings despair and death.
This is the most graphic account I have read of the gulags. Gustaw manages to step back from the events taking place and with out sentiment or condemnation report. Herling writes that inhumane conditions will change the behavior of those individuals affected. Some of the prisoners actions can be explained in light of this. Highly recommended.
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