Trotsky: A Revolutionary's Life

Leon Trotsky is not gone from our historical memory. A prominent revolutionary and a talented writer, he was a driving force behind upheavals that largely shaped the political landscape of the twentieth century. At the same time, an intellectual of world stature and a man capable of narrow ideological dogmatism, an effective military strategist and a skillful diplomat and politician—he failed to play his cards in the struggle for power against Stalin in the 1920s.

In Joshua Rubenstein’s book, Trotsky appears as a brilliant, and brilliantly imperfect, human being—and this biography becomes yet another key to understanding and interpreting what happened to Russia in the twentieth century.