Episode · Conversations with Tyler · 2024-12-04
Books mentioned on Stephen Kotkin on Stalin, Power, and the Art of Biography
Donate to Conversations with Tyler Give Crypto Other Ways to Give In his landmark multi-volume biography of Stalin, Stephen Kotkin shows how totalitarian power worked not just through terror from above, but through millions of everyday decisions from below.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Madness and Civilization
Discussed“so I went up to him as a naive with the this book Madness and civilization which we had been forced to read and I I started asking him questions what does this mean”
Where to get it
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History of madness
Discussed“so I went up to him as a naive with the this book Madness and civilization which we had been forced to read and I I started asking him questions what does this mean”
Where to get it
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Life and Fate
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman is a sprawling epic novel portraying the brutal realities, moral complexities, and human ramifications of the Holocaust and the broader Eastern Front during World War II.
Discussed“much of that is a theme in vasel Grossman's life and fate right the paity of people denunciations the logic of decentralized control”
Where to get it
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Book of Laughter and Forgetting
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera is a celebrated novel that blends storytelling, historical reflection, and philosophical essay to examine memory, political oppression, and human absurdity.
Discussed“just like I read kundra's a book of laughter and forgetting and after I learned Czech it was part of my Czech language training at Berkeley”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (1) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Own book Magnetic mountain
“and dto taught me a phrase called the little tactics of the habitat which became one of the core ideas of my book my dissertation and then book magnetic Mountain about this micro power stuff”