[.ca] Complete Idiot Guide Communism (ISBN 0028643143)

Carlisle is a Master:
Carlisle does it again. This is a great work that should be read by all. Ignore the Monday morning quarterbacks that get upset when their (Australian) perceptions about Communism are not presented. This is an "easy in / easy out" guide that is truly enjoyable to read.

Ok, however.:
This book to its credit generally gave a good overview of the history of Communism, however, it had two major shortcommings. The first was its obvious USA centrism which was well displayed in a summary towards the end of the book refering to US deaths in Vietnam without mentioning the Vietnamese deaths (are we to think US lives are more important than Vietnamese?). Additionally, the Complete Idiots Guide to Communism asserts that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident (the incident that set the official pretext for US involvement into the US/Vietnam conflict) was factually when it is generally agreed (even by the CIA) that this incident was stagged by the US military. Secondly in the initial pages of the book it asserts that no communist or socialist government has ever gained power by means other than violent overthrough. This is plainly wrong. For such proof we need look no further than the election of Salvador Allende in Chille (susequenbtly killed by a US backed, right-wing military coup), or the recent democratic election of Hugo Charvez in Venezuela (admittedly, this may have happened after the books publication). If one cared to look through the history of socialist governments I am sure more examples could be found.

Great Introduction to Communism:
I gave this book 5 stars because I knew very little about communism. This book helped to answer alotta questions. Was not the most detailed book on the subject matter but kept in line with good Idiots series books. If you want to get a better Idea of communism the author lists books in the index for further reading. I would recommend this book to anyone who wanted to learn more about communism and the cold war period of 1946-1989.

A good, basic book.:
This book discusses, in a general way, Communism and its place in the 20th century. As such, it does a very good job, giving the reader an idea of who was who, the relevence of certain ideas, historical context, etc. There were only two things that I felt took away from this book. One, the addition of a beginning chapter on pre-Revolutionary communes, mostly those of the United States. With the exception of the Paris Commune, these have no place in the rather narrow intellectual universe that marxists inhabit. The second thing that I felt kept this from being a truly great book (given its scope) was the fact that, unlike other "Idiot" books, this one did not have caricatures for the asides. I thought Marx, Lenin, and Stalin would have been great as cartoons explaining different aspects of communism.