Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938

Fascinating. For anyone with historical interest in Soviet thinking, politics and history, this is a great read. My only complaint is that while it went into some depth on Bukharin's Marxist economic ideas, it didn't follow up with detail on actual economic policy after the revolution - probably because Bukharin wasn't intimately involved with those policies. To be more clear, it did go into detail on political questions of economic policy, but not on the nitty gritty of planning per se. If you have interest in the politics, policies, theory and inner workings of the Bolshevik leadership, the men who fought with Lenin to gain power and worked with Stalin to keep it, this is the book for you. Obviously centered on Bukharin, this book provides insight outside of just him; it is not a personal biographical work, its a political biography, as it claims, meaning that it focuses on his ideas, policies and politics.