Leon Trotsky: A Biography

by Ronald Segal

This major new biography of Leon Trotsky, fittingly published on the centennial of his birth, magnificently captures the qualities of character and intellect that make Trotsky an infinitely captivating figure. A maker of the revolution as well as its brilliant historian, a prolific and superlative writer, a thinker as well as a doer, he had an extraordinary command of rarely compatible talents. Segal's compelling portrayal enhances Trotsky's stature still further in revealing a man delightfully lacking in pretensions and ultimately out of joint with his times but not with himself.

Genres: History, Biography

446 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

From the obituary in The Guardian (2008):

"At Cape Town University he majored in English and Latin and learned the raw facts of political life. Trinity College, Cambridge, followed, where he was more influenced by Enid Welsford, tutor in the English moralists, than by FR Leavis. An upper second was a disappointment. A dissertation on Paradise Lost won him a fellowship to the University of Virginia, but he found Charlottesville a 'museum world'. Within six months, in 1956, he was back in Cape Town to launch the magazine Africa South. Politics had won out."

From the book jacket for Islam's Black Slaves (2001):

"South African-born Ronald Segal, former editor and publisher of Africa South, left his country with the African National Congress leader Oliver Tambo in 1960 for political exile in England. Banned for more than thirty years, he returned briefly in 1992 and again in early 1994 to help the ANC run its campaign in the Western Cape for South Africa's first democratic election. Founding editor of the Penguin African Library, Segal is the author of thirteen books, including The Anguish of India, The Race War, The Americans, and, most recently, The Black Diaspora (FSG, 1996)."

From the book jacket for Into Exile (1963):

"From April 1960 to the end of 1961, Ronald Segal continued to publish Africa South in Exile from London, despite lack of funds (the South African Government had frozen all his assets) and the difficulties of smuggling copies back into the Union. In 1961 he published a book called Political Africa, a kind of Who's Who of the leading political personalities in Africa and of the aims and histories of their political parties. His personal knowledge of African affairs and his acquaintanceship with men like Nkrumah, Kaunda and Nyerere led him to expand some of the entries in Political Africa to form a book of African Profiles, published by Penguin a year later. In April 1961 he joined the Penguin staff as the editor of their new African Library. Recently he spent three months in India gathering material for a new book."

Reviews

[Mikee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book about a truly great man, unshakable in his convictions and unstoppable, except by icepick. A tragic ending - a warrior's death - to a warrior's life.

[Vince · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easily readable biography. You get the feeling Segal is a Trotskyite at heart aand can't wrap his head around the fact that Trotsky logic was not always correct which is why Trotsky ended up getting murdered. He excuses Trotsky's blind spot when it comes to Stalin by allways adding thast Lenin didn't stop Stalin either. Moving against Stalin would never have betrayed the revolution just stalin's place in it. Still a pretty good read.