|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Red Plenty
und über 1 Million weitere Bücher verfügbar für Amazon Kindle .
Erfahren Sie mehr
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Gutschein erhalten
Tauschen Sie jetzt Red Plenty gegen einen Amazon-Gutschein in Höhe von EUR 0,25 ein - einlösbar für Tausende von Artikeln bei Amazon.de. Entdecken Sie mehr eintauschbare Bücher im Bücher Trade-In Shop. Bitte beachten Sie die Teilnahmebedingungen.
 Jetzt für Amazon Student anmelden und um 20% erhöhten Eintauschwert sichern. |
Wird oft zusammen gekauft
Produktinformation
|
Mehr über den Autor
Entdecken Sie Bücher, lesen Sie über Autoren und mehr
› Besuchen Sie die Seite von Francis Spufford auf Amazon
› Besuchen Sie die Seite von Francis Spufford auf Amazon
Produktbeschreibungen
Kurzbeschreibung
The Soviet Union was founded on a fairytale. It was built on 20th-century magic called 'the planned economy', which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the penny-pinching lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, 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, every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche and sputniks would lead the way to the stars. And it's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending.
Über den Autor
Francis Spufford's first book, I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination, was awarded the Writers Guild Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of 1996 and a Somerset Maugham Award. His second book, The Child that Books Built was described as ' witty, compelling and elegant' by the New Statesman. His third book, Backroom Boys, was called a ' beautifully written book' by the Daily Telegraph and was shortlisted for the Aventis Prize and longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. He lives in Cambridge.
Welche anderen Artikel kaufen Kunden, nachdem sie diesen Artikel angesehen haben?
In diesem Buch
(Mehr dazu)
Vorgeschlagene Tags zu ähnlichen Produkten(Was ist das?)Setzen Sie den ersten relevanten Tag hinzu (ein Schlüsselwort, das mit diesem Produkt in engem Zusammenhang steht).
|
Kundenrezensionen
Es gibt noch keine Kundenrezensionen auf Amazon.de
5 Sterne
4 Sterne
3 Sterne
2 Sterne
1 Sterne
Die hilfreichsten Kundenrezensionen auf Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
22 Rezensionen
16 von 16 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Delightful and insightful: a mix of novel and history
18. Januar 2011
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
This is a novel of an economic concept, The Central Plan, set in the Soviet Union of the 50's and 60s. But it is a novel that uses semi-fictional characters to tell some real economic history. It is amusing and very readable, but it also comes with 50 page of explanatory notes and references, and with multi-page chapter introductions gently explaining Soviet dreams, hopes and economics.
It does an excellent job of explaining one of the central tragedies of the USSR, showing how an idealistic economic dream for making the world a better place foundered so dramatically. It seemed so obvious at the time: a planned economy, optimally coordinating all resources and production would clearly be so much more efficient than the chaos of capitalism. It would build a better, rosier world for everyone. Except...
Spufford uses fluid fictional scenes to gently tease out the hopes and contradictions of the period. We see the initial genuine utopian fervor that centralized planning is the Right Answer; then the defensive cunning of plant managers in manipulating the system; the hopeful attempts at mathematical optimizations; the desire to have some kind of pricing mechanism to drive rational decision making; the fear of the authorities of the social unrest caused by price swings; the slow drift from Khrushchev's brash wild optimism and even wilder plans, to the slow acceptance of defeat and stagnation under Brezhnev.
Spufford writes well and is often very amusing as he explores the foibles and hypocrisies of Soviet life. Yes, the central thread is all about economics, but fear not, it is cleverly told, with short vivid episodes exploring Soviet life as well as gently exposing the dreams and tragedies as idealized economics encounters the real world. For example, a wonderful triplet of short scenes exhibits the sly maneuvers of one factory's management to meet their assigned production goals. This starts with the slow revelation that they have sabotaged one of their own giant machines so that they will be allowed to upgrade it, and ends with their woeful discovery that they must replace it "as is" because the new upgraded machine would be cheaper. Cheaper? Yes, we learn how that can be a fatal barrier in a planned economy.
Overall this is a very enjoyable work, both as a novel, and as an insightful exploration of a failed utopian vision.
It does an excellent job of explaining one of the central tragedies of the USSR, showing how an idealistic economic dream for making the world a better place foundered so dramatically. It seemed so obvious at the time: a planned economy, optimally coordinating all resources and production would clearly be so much more efficient than the chaos of capitalism. It would build a better, rosier world for everyone. Except...
Spufford uses fluid fictional scenes to gently tease out the hopes and contradictions of the period. We see the initial genuine utopian fervor that centralized planning is the Right Answer; then the defensive cunning of plant managers in manipulating the system; the hopeful attempts at mathematical optimizations; the desire to have some kind of pricing mechanism to drive rational decision making; the fear of the authorities of the social unrest caused by price swings; the slow drift from Khrushchev's brash wild optimism and even wilder plans, to the slow acceptance of defeat and stagnation under Brezhnev.
Spufford writes well and is often very amusing as he explores the foibles and hypocrisies of Soviet life. Yes, the central thread is all about economics, but fear not, it is cleverly told, with short vivid episodes exploring Soviet life as well as gently exposing the dreams and tragedies as idealized economics encounters the real world. For example, a wonderful triplet of short scenes exhibits the sly maneuvers of one factory's management to meet their assigned production goals. This starts with the slow revelation that they have sabotaged one of their own giant machines so that they will be allowed to upgrade it, and ends with their woeful discovery that they must replace it "as is" because the new upgraded machine would be cheaper. Cheaper? Yes, we learn how that can be a fatal barrier in a planned economy.
Overall this is a very enjoyable work, both as a novel, and as an insightful exploration of a failed utopian vision.
11 von 12 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Fiction + History = Fascinating Synthesis of the Soviet Collapse
19. Oktober 2010
Format:Kindle Edition
This review pertains to the hardback book which is not available from Amazon.
It never occurred to me, even into adulthood, that I would ever see the collapse of the Soviet Union in my lifetime. That it happened so quickly was a shock. How this happened has piqued my curiosity for twenty years. It is common knowledge today that the collapse of the Soviet economy was hugely instrumental in the collapse of that system but, knowing that and understanding how and why had not been clear to me. At university, economics was reputed to have the ability to anesthetize whole classrooms. But, with Francis Spufford's "Red Plenty", there is definitely no threat of anesthesia. Economics never bogs the reader down. Spufford's technique of combining fiction with some very intricate history and economics brings the subject alive to the extent that I could hardly put the book down. Who or what is killing the Soviet economy? How is it happening? The ways people and industries cope with the flawed economic system and the effort to try to build a new one are never contrived or unbelievable and always informative. The people, both fictional and real, are both sympathetic and believable. The book revolves around the effort to build a central planning system that would reputedly rival the economies of the west without resorting to capitalism. The inherent flaws in the Soviet model and the human foibles that continuously undermine the old economy and the new effort is just fascinating. Definitely one of the best books I've read this year. Highly recommended.
It never occurred to me, even into adulthood, that I would ever see the collapse of the Soviet Union in my lifetime. That it happened so quickly was a shock. How this happened has piqued my curiosity for twenty years. It is common knowledge today that the collapse of the Soviet economy was hugely instrumental in the collapse of that system but, knowing that and understanding how and why had not been clear to me. At university, economics was reputed to have the ability to anesthetize whole classrooms. But, with Francis Spufford's "Red Plenty", there is definitely no threat of anesthesia. Economics never bogs the reader down. Spufford's technique of combining fiction with some very intricate history and economics brings the subject alive to the extent that I could hardly put the book down. Who or what is killing the Soviet economy? How is it happening? The ways people and industries cope with the flawed economic system and the effort to try to build a new one are never contrived or unbelievable and always informative. The people, both fictional and real, are both sympathetic and believable. The book revolves around the effort to build a central planning system that would reputedly rival the economies of the west without resorting to capitalism. The inherent flaws in the Soviet model and the human foibles that continuously undermine the old economy and the new effort is just fascinating. Definitely one of the best books I've read this year. Highly recommended.
6 von 7 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Enjoyable and informative
14. Oktober 2010
Format:Kindle Edition
Fun to read and meticulously documented, this is the best explanation I've seen of the mysterious process by which the Soviet system could combine the efforts of industrious, intelligent, well-intentioned workers, bureaucrats, and leaders, to produce such disappointing results.
Spufford takes us on a tour through the minds of several actors in the Soviet saga, sketching a plausible combination of interests, concerns, and motives that make each player's actions seem reasonable and perhaps even inevitable.
The writing is delightfully spiced with novel and strikingly effective phrasing, with a notable jewel every few pages. Among my favorites are "rubbery gabbling and squeaking" to describe sounds from a walkie-talkie, and casual mention of a a ground-to-air rocket battery as a computer's output device. Unusual scenery also appears in an electron-level description of the functioning of a computer, and later in a molecular-level description of carcinogenesis.
Spufford takes us on a tour through the minds of several actors in the Soviet saga, sketching a plausible combination of interests, concerns, and motives that make each player's actions seem reasonable and perhaps even inevitable.
The writing is delightfully spiced with novel and strikingly effective phrasing, with a notable jewel every few pages. Among my favorites are "rubbery gabbling and squeaking" to describe sounds from a walkie-talkie, and casual mention of a a ground-to-air rocket battery as a computer's output device. Unusual scenery also appears in an electron-level description of the functioning of a computer, and later in a molecular-level description of carcinogenesis.
Waren diese Rezensionen hilfreich?
Wir wollen von Ihnen hören.
Kunden diskutieren
|
Das Forum zu diesem Produkt
Fragen stellen, Meinungen austauschen, Einblicke gewinnen Aktive Diskussionen in ähnlichen Foren
Kundendiskussionen durchsuchen
|
Ähnliche Foren
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Lieblingslisten
Ähnliche Artikel finden
Anhand des Sachgebietes nach ähnlichen Produkten suchen:
Ihr Kommentar
Möchten Sie die Produktinformationen aktualisieren oder Feedback zu den Produktabbildungen geben?
|
