Leon Trotsky (Critical Lives)

This is a good concise exposition of the life of the great theorist and exponent of revolution, suitable for undergraduate students of Russia and of revolutionary politics. The author is sympathetic but not, like David North, an organized Trotskyite polemicist.The author treats the prominent recent biographies, of Swain, Thatcher, and Service, with far more respect than they deserve, but this may allow this text past the censors who would protect tender undergraduate eyes from radical thought. But the work of destroying these three pieces of a-historical hack work has been done by North already, with support from (above all) a leading scholar (Patenaude)from the formally-reactionary Hoover Institute at Stanford. I do down-grade the text for the minor demerit of failing to cite North (David North, In Defense of Leon Trotsky, Mehring B Books 2013, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1893638367/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_3, with appendices in the 2015 edition), whose demolition of Service, and his Harvard University Press publisher, is the stuff of which legends are made.Of course any serious interest in Trotsky should be fueled by Isaac Deutscher's classic three volume biography.

This brief study presents a good deal of information and commentary in fewer than 200 pages. Well-researched, even-handed, though with a definite point of view favorable to Trotsky, the book will be valuable for readers interested in the life and ideas of this important revolutionary of the 20th century.

excellent

With great insight and meticulous research, Le Blanc has produced a balanced view of a great revolutionary.It requires reading a second time.

the book is literally falling apart as I read it. Numerous pages coming un done from binding.The book itself is well written

Excellent!

Trotsky was one of the most important and most persecuted leaders of the 20th Century. The author does an excellent job of bringing Trotsky's personality alive while also explaining the political context in which he operated and contributions he made. The author is sympathetic to Trotsky but also critical of him at times. Most importantly, the book is very readable and lucid.