This absorbing, well-written biography presents a major reassessment of the life and career of Leon Trotsky, who along with Lenin and Stalin played a leading role in the formation and early years of the Soviet Union and thus in the history of the 20th century. The biography is distinctive, in part, because it casts a critical yet judicious and well-founded view on Trotsky's life and is written by distinguished Oxford historian Service, who has a deep understanding of the events and actors of the period. The author uses newly available archival materials such as telegrams, letters, and other documents to build a more accurate portrayal of his complex subject. In addition, Service reconsiders the large volume of materials that has long been available about Trotsky and subjects it to innovative scrutiny that often yields interesting results. For example, he uses drafts of Trotsky's various manuscripts in order to obtain less guarded and perhaps more authentic versions of his thinking than is reflected in the polished final ones. This book will undoubtedly become the standard biography of Trotsky, and it is unlikely to be superseded for many years. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. N. M. Brooks New Mexico State University

Having covered Lenin and Stalin, Oxford history professor Service completes his biographical trilogy with the life of Leon Trotsky. Thick and intensely researched but a pleasure to read, it should remain the definitive work for some time. Trotsky (1879-1940) "flashed like a comet across the political sky," sharing credit with Lenin for winning the 1917 revolution but losing the battle to succeed him after his 1923 death. While this outline is well known, Service mines new and old sources to fill in the details. A brilliant writer and speaker but too arrogant to attract a following, Trotsky had no chance against the methodical Stalin, whom he repeatedly insulted. Stalin forced him into exile in 1929 and had him murdered in 1940. Before and during exile, Trotsky poured out histories, memoirs and journalism, heavily influencing our picture of the revolution and its major figures. Service emphasizes that he was no objective observer. Stalin was not as stupid as portrayed, and Trotsky had no objection to mass murder when it served his purposes. This is a thoughtful, rewarding and essential contribution to 20th-century history. 50 b&w photos. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Following Lenin (2000) and Stalin (2005), this work continues Service's series about leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution. Looming in his portrait of Trotsky, the Bolsheviks' outstanding orator and commander of Communist forces in the Russian Civil War, is whether Trotsky could have prevailed in the post-Lenin power struggle. Service allows the possibility, but his commentary about Trotsky's traits and habits militate against it. Developing Trotsky's characteristics, Service detects in the young man a self-assured talent for Marxist polemics and a neglect of others' sensitivities that eventually earned him enemies inside the Bolshevik Party. Trotsky excelled in verbal virtuosity (the dustbin of history is his coinage) but, as Service recounts, was a terrible listener. He disdained ideas other than his own, an arrogance palpable to and resented by the Bolshevik elite. Compounding Trotsky's disadvantage, Service writes, was his clumsiness in the political maneuvering to succeed Lenin. Rounding out his depiction with Trotsky's private life, which included an abandoned wife and children, Service solidly updates the hitherto definitive biography (hagiography, to critics) by Isaac Deutscher.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2009 Booklist

With this biography, Service (Russian history, Oxford Univ.; Stalin: A Biography) completes his trilogy on the founding figures of the Soviet Union: Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky. He claims that this is the first full-length biography of Trotsky written by a non-Trotskyist outside of Russia. As such, Service can ask the kinds of awkward questions omitted in the influential biographies by Isaac Deutscher and Pierre Broue. Also distinguishing the work is its extensive use of archival sources and rare contemporary published materials, much of it used for the first time in this biography. Service casts a critical eye on Trotsky's own writings and the interpretations of his followers and finds Trotsky's diagnosis of his defeat by Stalin self-serving and misleading. The author cogently argues that Trotsky himself unintentionally contributed to the construction of the Stalinist edifice and that Trotsky was not the realist he imagined himself to be but an ideologue unable to grasp the dynamics of contemporary geopolitics. Service succeeds in recovering many of the aspects of Trotsky's life that the revolutionary and his followers tried to bury. Verdict A readable and persuasive biography that should be required reading for students of the Soviet Union and the history of world communism.-Sean Pollock, Wright State Univ., Dayton, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.