Books, Arts & Manners: A Soviet Life

The Man Who Changed the World: The Lives of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, by Gail Sheehy (HarperCollins, 401 pp., $22.95)

THE opening sentences of The Man Who Changed the World do not augur well for those wanting a sober, level-headed study of Mikhail Gorbachev: “The eyes. Everyone is struck by the gleam that blazes behind his dark eyes . . . as if with the intensity of his belief he had burned his image of a new world into their own retinas and they will never be quite the same.”

About the Author

Matthew Scully

Matthew Scully is the author of Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy. He served as literary editor of National Review and as a senior speechwriter to President George W. Bush.

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The Man Who Changed the World: The Lives of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, by Gail Sheehy (HarperCollins, 401 pp., $22.95)

THE opening sentences of The Man Who Changed the World do not augur well for those wanting a sober, level-headed study of Mikhail Gorbachev: “The eyes. Everyone is struck by the gleam that blazes behind his dark eyes . . . as if with the intensity of his belief he had burned his image of a new world into their own retinas and they will never be quite the same.”

About the Author

Matthew Scully

Matthew Scully is the author of Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy. He served as literary editor of National Review and as a senior speechwriter to President George W. Bush.