REVIEWED ELSEWHERE

• Published in: Biography (Honolulu) 2006, Vol.29 (2), p.386-419
• Main Authors: Altizer, Nell, Fassiotto, Michael, Garneau, Théo, Hilt, Douglas
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Akhmatova, Anna (1889-1966); Blair, Tony; Contemporary problems; Cultural factors; Distinctive features; Feminism; French language; Ideology; Musical theater; Nonfiction; Religion & politics; Science; Social factors; Stein, Gertrude (1874-1946)
• ISSN: 0162-4962; 1529-1456; 1529-1456
• DOI: 10.1353/bio.2006.0033

Publications reviewed include The Economist, L'Espresso, Far Eastern Economic Review, French Review, French Studies, Le Monde des Livres, New York Review of Books (NYRB), New York Times Book Review (NYTBR), Le Nouvel Observateur, Science, Times Literary Supplement (TLS), and the Washington Post National Weekly Edition (WP). While 'Anna of All the Russias' provides a thorough account of Akhmatova's day-to-day movements and her complicated marriages and affairs, it frequently loses sight of her essence, and of the broader historical and cultural context that informed her work. Born and married in a middle-class milieu, qualifying as a nurse, fleeing from mother and husband, feminist, founder of the avant-gardist review Le Problème Sexuel (at the early date of 1933), travelling in the world's hot spots, social worker in a factory, Berty Albrecht was with Henry Frenay at the roots of the underground network Combat. In his biography, Andrew Brown convincingly puts together a vindication of Bernal's own account (of the controversy over Operation Overlord), that he not only prepared briefings, beach tests and charts in connection with it, but that he even landed on the Normandy beaches on D-Day+2 to assess the effectiveness of allied bombing. The first part of the book analyses those histoires de couples which form a distinctive feature of the Vth Republic. An earlier generation of intellectual historians writing after World War II-Isaiah Berlin, Jacob Talmon, Frank Manuel, Paul Benichou-shared Burleigh's intuition that the seeds of Europe's collapse in the 20th century were planted in this landscape.