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Karl Marx
Book by Gumbrell, Colin
128 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1983
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 1, 2017
Before I finished the introduction, I was already doing some shallow Internet research to see if I could find more about this book and its author, which I had found on a free-to-take table of withdrawn books from my local library.
With a brief look, I could find no other books by this author. Someone by the same name is a creator and editor of crossword puzzles and crossword puzzle collections. I could not find a certain source to confirm or deny that this is the same author. I wouldn't doubt it.
This little book is very handsome. It's a hardcover, with an oxblood and black pattern, and the book's name embossed in gold. It contains a fine collection of quality colour photographs at the back. Altogether, it's a pretty book to have on the shelf and flip through.
Unfortunately, the text is less helpful than the Wikipedia article on the same subject. It contains a bibliography five items long, but no notes whatsoever. If it were to keep to the most basic and uncontroversial facts about the life of Marx, this would not be a problem. Unfortunately, the author instead chooses to undermine Marx at every detail, to accuse him without citing any sources of irrelevant negative behaviour traits, to choose unusual negative circumstances to expound on for many pages while strangely leaping over accomplishments in single paragraphs, and to make sweeping claims about the nature of capitalism in 1983, and criticisms of The work of Marx without any shred of evidence or argument to back up his premises.
This book reads like a bad book report by a high school student who was just lectured for a single unit of a Social Studies class in Grade Ten in 1983 USA about all the reasons why Marx is terrible because Communism is bad.
But it is very pretty.
With a brief look, I could find no other books by this author. Someone by the same name is a creator and editor of crossword puzzles and crossword puzzle collections. I could not find a certain source to confirm or deny that this is the same author. I wouldn't doubt it.
This little book is very handsome. It's a hardcover, with an oxblood and black pattern, and the book's name embossed in gold. It contains a fine collection of quality colour photographs at the back. Altogether, it's a pretty book to have on the shelf and flip through.
Unfortunately, the text is less helpful than the Wikipedia article on the same subject. It contains a bibliography five items long, but no notes whatsoever. If it were to keep to the most basic and uncontroversial facts about the life of Marx, this would not be a problem. Unfortunately, the author instead chooses to undermine Marx at every detail, to accuse him without citing any sources of irrelevant negative behaviour traits, to choose unusual negative circumstances to expound on for many pages while strangely leaping over accomplishments in single paragraphs, and to make sweeping claims about the nature of capitalism in 1983, and criticisms of The work of Marx without any shred of evidence or argument to back up his premises.
This book reads like a bad book report by a high school student who was just lectured for a single unit of a Social Studies class in Grade Ten in 1983 USA about all the reasons why Marx is terrible because Communism is bad.
But it is very pretty.
Displaying 1 of 1 review