Martin Sixsmith's Top Book Recommendations
Want to know what books Martin Sixsmith recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Martin Sixsmith's favorite book recommendations of all time.
Recommended by Martin Sixsmith, and 1 others. Martin SixsmithHe was an official in the provisional government. His moment of fame was when Nicholas abdicated and he wanted the crown to go to his brother Michael. Not all that surprisingly, Michael was a bit dubious about this because he was inheriting a real can of worms. So the provisional government sent a delegation to Michael to tell him he was now the Tsar. The delegation was led by Vladimir... (Source)
Ten Days That Shook the World is John Reed’s eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution. A contemporary journalist writing in the first flush of revolutionary enthusiasm, he gives a gripping record of the events in Petrograd in November 1917, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks finally seized power. Containing verbatim reports both of speeches by leaders and the chance comments of bystanders, set against an idealized backcloth of the proletariat, soldiers, sailors, and peasants uniting to throw off oppression, Reed’s account is the product of passionate... more
Recommended by Martin Sixsmith, and 1 others. Martin SixsmithI like John Reed because he’s a journalist like myself, like yourself, and he was on hand to paint this fantastic, vivid picture of 1917. As you know, Warren Beatty turned it into that movie Reds in the 1980s that made revolution fun, sexy and exciting. John Reed debunks the great Soviet myth that October was a huge heroic struggle by the masses. He said: No, it wasn’t like that. The Winter... (Source)
Recommended by Martin Sixsmith, and 1 others. Martin SixsmithHe’s the antithesis of Tolstoy in a way. August 1914 and the Red Wheel novels are a polemic against Tolstoy because he sees this Tolstoyan inevitability of history and he says: That’s wrong! People need to make a stand and try to change things for the better! (Source)
Recommended by Martin Sixsmith, and 1 others. Martin Sixsmith This is a more arcane choice. He was a Hungarian naturalised British historian in the late 70s when I was at university. His view of history was quite fashionable at that time and has stayed with me. Specifically, his view of Russian history. It’s a rather conservative, right-wing view that says Russia can never be a Western-style democracy or market economy in the way that we know it because of... (Source)
As Napoleon's army invades, Tolstoy brilliantly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and... more
Vanora BennettAlthough it was published in 1869, War and Peace deals with events half a century earlier. This makes it one of the first historical novels – and, all these years later, it’s still the greatest. (Source)
Tendai HuchuTolstoy does something which is very unusual in War and Peace and which, for his time, was pretty profound: he sees the conditions of the ordinary soldier on the battlefield. (Source)
Niall FergusonAs a middle aged man, I react differently to Tolstoy than I did when I first read War and Peace at about 15. (Source)
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