New York Times Opinion: Bard Professor Sean McMeekin’s Book on Stalin Is Recommended Reading for Historical Context on Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer

According to New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat, of all the reading one can do to put the events of the film Oppenheimer into historical and political context, Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II, by Sean McMeekin, Francis Flournoy Professor of European History and Culture at Bard College, is the one that will restore “a corrective to the movie’s final act, in which the spirit of a simplifying anti-anti-communism prevails over the political complexity that Nolan carries off for most of the film.” McMeekin’s book examines Stalin, not Hitler, “as the central figure in the global conflagration, an instigator and manipulator and ultimate victor” of the Second World War, writes Douthat. “And any viewer of Oppenheimer the movie would be wise to hold the malignancy of Stalin, the scale of his success at both conquest and manipulation, in mind while watching its complex hero’s complex fate unfold.”

Post Date: 08-08-2023