Search results for ""Author Paul M. Levitt""

As Stalin lies dying, this novel records his last thoughts, which he renders as a movie about the people he believes envenomed his life, namely, Lenin and certain women. (A film devotee, Stalin so loved movies that some scholars have even suggested that he governed the Soviet empire by cinematocracy, rule by cinema.) He has suffered a stroke but will linger for three days before dying. As in a film, he revisits scenes and old arguments with Lenin, and then endures a trial over his charge that women have poisoned his life. At the conclusion of the trial, Stalin’s mind screen returns to V.I. Lenin. What follows then is Stalin’s concluding mockery and denunciation of Lenin; Lenin’s final assessment of Stalin; and the end of the novel: Stalin’s dying words.

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Denunciation became so commonplace under Stalin that people regarded it as their patriotic duty to spy on others and even expose members of their own family. The original Bolsheviks, for reasons of ideological purity, put great store in transparency. But under Stalin, transparency evolved into a state of constant surveillance. In the late 1930s, a young man named Sasha Parsky kills two soldiers who come to arrest his parents as kulaks. He escapes arrest—though not suspicion. Sasha, now under greater scrutiny, is asked by Boris Filatov, the chief of the local secret police, to take a position as the head of a small boys’ school with the condition that Sasha spy on the previous director, who was dismissed for political reasons. As Sasha’s visits to the exiled man turn into discussions on politics and Sasha begins making changes at the school, it is only a matter of time before anonymous letters denouncing him begin to appear on Filatov’s desk. But even more ominous is the appearance of two men from the past who have the knowledge to do Sasha great harm. Caught between Filatov and the fear of exposure, Sasha risks everything by testing the fidelity of a loved one.

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Set during the Great Depression, when fascism was looking increasingly attractive to many, Paul M. Levitt’s latest novel surrounds attempts to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the counterforces at work: the American Nazi Party, Avery Brundage, a German assassin, and those American athletes—eighteen of whom were the first black athletes hoping to compete—wishing to show the world their superb talents. When a young woman in the employ of Abner “Longie” Zwillman, the Don of New Jersey, goes missing, Jay Klug and his friend T-Bone Searle try to find her before she falls victim to a brutal Nazi killer. Their journey leads them to the man who reputedly killed the famous gangster Arnold Rothstein (the Big Bankroll), to Jean Harlow, Dreamland, Cape May, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Amarillo, and even Los Angeles.

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Avraham Bahar leaves debt-ridden and depressed Albania to seek a better life in, ironically, Stalinist Russia. A professional barber, he curries favor with the Communist regime, ultimately being invited to become Stalin’s personal barber at the Kremlin, where he is entitled to live in a government house with other Soviet dignitaries. In the intrigue that follows, Avraham, now known as Razan, is not only barber to Stalin but also to the many Stalin look-alikes that the paranoid dictator circulates to thwart possible assassination attempts—including one from Razan himself.

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Wherever stories are told, in whatever language, life and death hold center stage, along with pain and glee, mystery and magic, fools and foes, deceit and decency. This book has them all. Here, in embellishments upon the folklore of Native American tribes from the Pacific Northwest, are tales that seek to explain the world, dispel its darkness, and celebrate its light. So, meet a sorcerer whose magic can turn a horse into a loon, a man who becomes a bush-tailed rat, a girl whose sons were born as puppies, and a Native American tribe that sought the power of shamans to escape white men bent on destroying them.

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Burdensome, Katzenjammer, Mystify, Wondrous, and Zany - these are five of the twenty-six words, one for each letter of the alphabet, that appear in ""Weighty Words, Too"". As with the earlier ""Weighty Word Book"", the stories, often fanciful, help young readers build their vocabularies. 'Hibernate' tells the tale of Nathaniel, a very energetic Canadian bear, who plays in the snow with the other bears. Soon all the bears tire and want to sleep, with the exception of Nate. 'He's hyper,' one grizzly bear observes. 'If it's winter sleep you want,' advises Nathaniel, 'then I suggest you do the opposite from me, hyper Nate'. So, whenever animals sleep through the winter, think of 'hyper Nate', and you will remember the word Hibernate.

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