Red Plenty

Once upon a time in the Soviet Union.Strange as it may seem, the grey, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairytale It was built on the twentieth century magic called the planned economy , which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that lands of capitalism could never match And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950 s, the magic seemed to be working.Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out glitter Manhattan, and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche It s about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, it give the tyranny its happy ending It s history, it s fiction It s a comedy of ideas, and a novel about the cost of ideas.By award winning and famously unpredictable author of The Child That Books Built and Backroom Boys, Red Plenty is as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne. Best Read eBook Red Plenty by Francis Spufford – kino-fada.fr We Were Born to Make Fairy Tales Come True 1959 Red Plenty is an unusual and fascinating book It s part historical fiction about the Soviet Union in the third quarter of the 20th century, and part survey of the economic methods of central planning It was at this time that the Soviet economy appeared to be growing at an absurd pace, threatening to outstrip the United States before 1980 I was going to go off on a wild tangent on the mathematics behind a planned economy, but I was pleased and We Were Born to Make Fairy Tales Come True 1959 Red Plenty is an unusual and fascinating book It s part historical fiction about the Soviet Union in the third quarter of the 20th century, and part survey of the economic methods of central planning It was at this time that the Soviet economy appeared to be growing at an absurd pace, threatening to outstrip the United States before 1980 I was going to go off on a wild tangent on the mathemat...An interesting piece of historical fiction that looks mostly at the Khrushchev years where the Soviet Union was advancing in science and industry It was a tipping point of the Soviet Union Could they plan and grow an economy that could out pace the West There are stories of government efforts and ambitious youthful academics all wanting to make the system work The personal touch makes our once arch enemies very human and wanting the same same things we did peace, prosperity, and an end to An interesting piece of historical fiction that looks mostly at the Khrushchev years where the Soviet Union was advancing in science and industry It was a tipping point of the Soviet Union Could they plan and grow an economy that could out pace the West There are stories of government efforts and ambitious youthful academics all wanting to make the system work The personal touch makes our once arch enemies very human and wanting the same same things we did peace, prosperity, and an end to dusty rutted roads.Each section is prefaced with some real history and the fictional sections even contain documentation Spufford does a nice job of reminding the reader that communism was not what happened in the Soviet Union ...Easily my book of the year so far, this is a remarkably original and entertaining book.This is a mixed fiction non fiction book about economics Please don t let it put you off this is not just a book for geeks and wonks although they ll love it too , this is a story ultimately of people, and how people just won t do what they ought to, no matter what.The unassailable position of Capitalism in it s current form is not due to the inherent greatness of Capitalism, but because of the manifest fa Easily my book of the year so far, this is a remarkably original and entertaining book.This is a mixed fiction non fiction book about economics Please don t let it put you off this is not just a book for geeks and wonks although they ll love it too , this is a...Red Plenty is probably one of the finest, and saddest, books I have ever read It s hard to tell what it is The best description I ve heard is that it s science fiction only the science is economics, and the fiction is entirely based on real history Red Plenty is about the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, told in a series of stories anecdotes, in many cases of the lives of ordinary citizens, apparatchiks, and intelligenzia of the time.Some of the vignettes feature an ordinary citizen w Red Plenty is probably one of the finest, and saddest, books I have ever read It s hard to tell what it is The best description I ve heard is that it s science fiction only the science is economics, and the fiction is entirely based on real history Red Plenty is about the rise and...4.5 starsNormally whenever I ve decided to add a half star I give the book the lower star rating 4 stars for a 4.5 star book, for example But the writing here was just sooooo good, I m willing to give it a full 5 stars and then round down half a star Make sense No Oh well .Let s seeI won this though a FirstReads giveaway thanks Okay, so I ve read a lot of other reviews about this book, and I m really glad I did Most of them focus on the economics presented in this book o 4.5 starsNormally whenever I ve decided to add a half star I give the book the lower star rating 4 stars for a 4.5 star book, for example But the writing here was just sooooo good, I m willing to give it a full 5 stars and then round down half a star Make sense No Oh well .Let s seeI won this though a FirstReads giveaway thanks Okay, so I ve read a lot of other reviews about this book, and I m really glad I did Most of them focus on the economics presented in this book oddly enough, i... This is not a novel It has too much to explain, to be one of those But it is not a history either, for it does its explaining in the form of a story only the story is the story of an idea, first of all, and only afterwards, glimpsed through the chinks of the idea s fate, the story of the people involved The idea is the hero It is the idea that sets forth, into a world of hazards and illusions, monsters and transformations, helped by some of those it meets along the way and hindered by other This is not a novel It has too much to explain, to be one of those But it is not a history either, for it does its explaining in the form of a story only the story is the story of an idea, first of all, and only afterwards, glimpsed through the chinks of the idea s fate, the story of the people involved The idea is the hero It is the idea that sets forth, into a world of hazards and illusions, monsters and transformations, helped by some of those it meets along the way and hindered by others Best to call this a fairytale then though it really happened, or something like it And not just any fairytale, but specifically a Russian fairy tale, to go alongside the stories of Baba Yaga and the Glass Mountain that Afanaseyev the folklorist collected when he rode out over the black earth of Russia, under it s wide sky, in the nineteenth century.Francis Spufford s Golden Hill was a deserving winner of the 2016 Costa Book Award for First Novel deservedly, except that one might debate whether 20...Turpinu las t visas gr matblogeru Ziemassv tkos d van s sa emt s gr matas o man ied vin ja Vilis Cit ju No savas puses d vinu Spaforda Red Plenty Inside the Fifties Soviet Dream , jo izskat s p c k t da, kas b s sti viet p c padomju laika s riju m pievar anas Te n ktos atz ties, ka padomjlaika s rija ir palikusi nepiev r ta, lai gan piecgades pl n t ir ierakst ta k oblig ti izpild ms pas kums Nedaudz par o gr matu paok er ju internet un nopirku uz kindle jau p rnaj decemb Turpinu las t visas gr matblogeru Ziemassv tkos d van s sa emt s gr matas o man ied vin ja Vilis Cit ju No savas puses d vinu Spaforda Red Plenty Inside the Fifties Soviet Dream , jo izskat s p c k t da, kas b s sti viet p c padomju laika s riju m pievar anas Te n ktos atz ties, ka padomjlaika s rija ir palikusi nepiev r ta, lai gan piecgades pl n t ir ierakst ta k oblig ti izpild ms pas kums Nedaudz par o gr matu paok er ju internet un nopirku uz kindle jau p rnaj decembr.Padomju Savien bas pamatideja nudien nebija visus sadz t l eros un ziedot visus resursus armijai Galvenais bija uzcelt komunismu, armija bija vajadz ga tikai procesa aizsardz bai Komunisms noz m ja ar katram p c sp j m un katram p c vajadz b m Komunismu nevar uzcelt vien dien , bet uz 1980 gadu tam vajadz ja b t gatavam Un...Another novel, and one of the strangest I ve read in a long, long time It s a novel based on, of all things, the attempt to transform the Soviet economy using cybernetics and computers in the early 1960s, during Khruschev s cultural thaw The author describes the book as a fairy tale, albeit a heavily footnoted fairy tale based on real people, but its reallylike a science fiction story, one set in a land notadvanced but still very distinct from any we ve known The story essential Another novel, and one of the strangest I ve read in a long, long time It s a novel based on, of all things, the attempt to transform the Soviet economy using cybernetics and computers in the early 1960s, during Khruschev s cultural thaw The author describes the book as a fairy tale, albeit a heavily footnoted fairy tale based on real people, but its reallylike a science fiction story, one set in a land notadvanced but still very distinct from any we ve known The story essentially revolves around Leonid Kantorovich, the real life economist who was the only Soviet to ever win the Nobel Prize in Economics, granted for his work on linear programming He and a band of merry follower...A fictionalized history of Soviet Union economics Absolutely terrific read, especially in the light of the current financial crisis.If you ve ever wondered how the USSR functioned day to day, this is the book for you Spend a few hundred pages in the heads of Spufford s large cast of characters and it will all start to make a certain twisted sense, so much so that you may begin to wonder how Western style capitalism can possibly function As one character asks, but who tells you how much bread A fictionalized history of Soviet Union economics Absolutely terrific read, especially in the light of the current financial crisis.If you ve ever wondered how the USSR functioned day to day, this is the book for you Spend a few hundred pages in the heads of Spufford s large cast of characters and it will all start to make a certain twisted sense, so much so that you may begin to wonder how Western style capitalism can possibly function As one character asks, but who tells you how much br...This is a really interesting book, a light on an important period of history the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1969 of which I knew much less than I had realised, looked at through the eyes of true believers in the economic system of Communism as it developed under Khrushchev, who were then bitterly disappointed as Brezhnev and Kosygin and later Brezhnev alone took over I grew up at the tail end of the Brezhnev era, when the Soviet system seemed monolithic and permanent subsequent events prove This is a really interesting book, a light on an import...

• English
• 24 January 2018
Francis Spufford
• Hardcover
• 434 pages
• 0571225233
• Francis Spufford
• Red Plenty