Robert Service - Trosky: A Biography (2010)

Robert Service
Trotsky: A Biography
Harvard University Press
2010

Robert Service completes his Communist Trilogy (the first two biographies were of Lenin and Stalin) with Trotsky: A Biography.  In many ways Lev Davidovich, AKA, Leon Trotsky, is the most compelling of figures in the early Bolshevistic leadership.  His biography details the chaotic formation of the movement that finally overthrew the Romanovs in 1917.  Much like Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Trotsky was a mouth piece for Lenin and his and Che's stories are similarly romanticized.  He was an excellent writer and orator and comrade for the Party.  Trotsky ran afoul with most internal leadership, including Stalin, reasoning he was not communistic enough, but rather a mere dictator.  Stalin had Trotsky assassinated in his exile home of Mexico in 1940.

Carolina Chocolate Drops: Genuine Negro Jig" (2010)

Carolina Chocolate Drops
Genuine Negro Jig
Nonesuch
2010

The music of the Carolina Chocolate Drops sets a new standard for what "roots" music.  Blasting forward out of a 150 year tradition of jug and fiddle music of the Piedmont East Coast through Tennessee and North Mississippi, the Drops give a modern face to an African-American folk tradition that grew up along side the Delta Blues.  This is antique music, rendered new again by youthful psyches ready to reacquaint the world with a nostalgic sound not often heard.  The best music is that which is newly (re)discovered.