Morgan Blackledge’s Reviews > The Right Brain and the Origin of Human Nature > Status Update

Well my good sir so are you for reading so many varieties of titles . Discovered you via you review of one of my favorite author “Stephen Kotkin” . I was curious if you had finished the sequel to the first book you had read sub-titled “waiting for Hitler”. Pls forgive my mess English if being my fourth language.

A. Oh hell yeah I read Stalin: Waiting For Hitler. It’s was a (very very long but very very good) BANGER

I thought there was gonna be a book 3 of that series. But I read both one and two (Paradoxes of Power). Staggeringly good.

And you’re doing pretty good with English considering it’s your fourth language! Sadly, it’s my first and only language. And that is another way of saying I’m a white American 😆

Kotkin is almost finished with the third title . He had gotten two types of cancer and almost died and that that has resulted in the book’s writing being delayed. And it seems Kotkin is presently writing the saga of the Korean War and the from what I have been able to understand from the subtitle of the third book in an interview given by Kotkin to the “Hoover institute” it seems the book will also include chapters about post-Stalin USSR.Basically about how his accomplishments in consolidating power in the one party-state dictatorship had destabilized the regime. I think if you liked Kotkin’s works there is another author from whom Kotkin takes direct inspiration from the Journalist and biographer “Robert A. Caro” whose monumental biographies of LBJ are the hallmark of biographical portrait of how power is accumulated,consolidated and retained. Caro had also written about an extremely powerful figure who had essentially enjoyed enormous power in the New York City, that book is a bit easier read than his LBJ books so i generally recommend that for starters. Caro is a better writer than Kotkin especially his journalistic briskness which Kotkin being an historian of Annels school of historiography struggles with in synthesizing vast amounts of archival materials. Considering you interests in the saga of the infamous Epstein I think you may find this book( Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point
Book by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky )by two social scientists who had gained eminence via their publication of “How democracies die” helpful,especially so considering the contemporary turn in American domestic politics which seems to tilting towards what Steven Levitsky calls “competitive authoritarianism”.

Though also I must add that Caro had not finished his last book covering the second term of LBJ as president as the amount of details that Caro attempts to cover are staggering and it seems considering that Caro is around a century old many are skeptical if he will be able to finish the work . If you are still interested in Caro’s work “The Power Broker” is a good start.

The book by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky covers how the institutional ossification thanks to bifurcated legislative structure alongside existence of filibuster and lack of organized electoral system has allowed insulation of the American politics structures towards an system that is favorable towards the elite and thus they can get away with policy failures and many other things without any democratic accountability.