Yes! I can recommend! The best, most readable and insightful one is the biography of Stalin by Edvard Radzinsky. Here’s the link. It’s available on Kindle and Audible. Read it, I promise it’s beyond good.

Of course, you could always read Kotkin, and he’s good, but there’s no joy in that reading. Kotkin is boring. Plus, Radzinsky had access to incredible materials.

Read it and tell me what you think. We can discuss right here because Radzinsky’s interpretation of Stalin’s personality can absolutely be debated.

I’m practically jumping up in joy that somebody is about to discover this excellent book.

I have read several books by John Marrs, and I still believe that his novel The One is the strongest of all. This is a writer who’s great at depicting dysfunction, especially the female kind. What Lies Between Us has dysfunction galore but it’s the weakest novel by this author I have read so far.

What Lies Between Us depicts Maggie and Nina, a mother and her 40yish yet eternally immature daughter. Maggie is a typical Boomer who stole her daughter’s capacity to procreate and have a life of her own out of selfishness. Nina is a typical Millennial, entitled, lazy, and angry at the whole world for not living up to her fantasy life. The selfish Maggie and the immature Nina torture each other for decades. There’s no place for men in the mother-daughter fixation on hurting each other, and the duo ends up killing the men who appear in their lives.

This sounds like a premise for an interesting thriller but the novel ended up being quite boring. Even the brilliant performance by the seriously talented actress Elizabeth Knowelden who did the Audible version couldn’t save it. The generational stereotypes are so strong that the plot becomes predictable. Maggie and Nina never manage to sound entirely real.

Not a total waste but nothing like the other novels I read by this author.

There was a famous sci-fi novel in the USSR where a Soviet scientist created a clone who was supposed to be the perfect human. The scientist thought that if you design a creature that can satisfy all of its material needs with ease, this will liberate the creature to pursue feats of intellectual and artistic creativity.

When the scientist finally grew his “Perpetually Satisfied” clone and activated him, the clone grabbed every possession he could reach, cocooned himself in these possessions, and stopped time. No intellectual or artistic pursuits interested him. All he wanted to do was possess everything, including time.

This reminded me of that old Soviet novel:

🚨 BREAKING: The “No-Go-Zone” in Minneapolis is getting fully stocked like a pop-up leftist supply depot, free hand warmers, winter gear, coffee, food, milk, you name it.

This is PROFESSIONAL-grade logistics. Someone is BANKROLLING this autonomous zone. pic.twitter.com/CN3enk81XP

— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) January 25, 2026

The incredible bravery of Ukrainian rescue workers is a source of inspiration:

Six days submerged in freezing water.
In total darkness. In brutal cold.
All to bring warmth back to Kyiv.

After a Russian missile strike flooded one of Kyiv’s thermal power plants, a damaged pipe made immediate repairs impossible—putting heating and electricity at risk for… pic.twitter.com/zBUJ5iARm3

— #NEIVANMADE (@neivanmade) January 26, 2026

While some people are debating and leaking emotions, others are doing a cold-nosed monetization.

From Slate:

When women can’t have as many children as we want to have, it scrambles our brains. Some of us deal with it through therapy, religion, and tons of personal growth. Others prefer not to address the issue and become bitter harpies who seethe with rage and envy towards more fertile women. I do not recommend this latter path.

I don’t like Usha but I was extremely happy for her when her pregnancy was announced. As I’m happy when anybody’s pregnancy is announced but I’ll confess that the feeling is especially acute when it’s an older mom.

It is not other women’s fault that we have been blighted in the reproductive area. Their easy, healthy pregnancies don’t take anything from us. The only right thing to do is to be sincerely happy for them.

No matter the hardship that has touched your life, you can always decide not to be a shit, is what I’m saying.

I’m not shocked that it was a gay man who created this brilliant political ad:

I just met the gay man that wrote the script for the political ad- Trump is for you. Kamala is for they/them. Still picking my jaw up off the floor.

— Jamie Reed Whistleblower (@JamieWhistle) January 25, 2026

I don’t know why this woman is picking up jaws when everybody who lives in human society knows that the proportion of talent and creativity among gay men is off the charts.

it’s crazy to me when women thirst over hockey players of all athletes. the sport with the most hotness per capita is obviously basketball. even football players are hotter, they usually have all their teeth at least.

— julia (@eathedocument) January 24, 2026

This person is talking crazy. Hockey is the only sexy sport.

I’m babysitting today for the kids of a friend who has been illegally in the country for 15 years. The entire time I’ve known her I’ve begged her to get legalized. Or to go home. But it is all part of a bizarre relationship she has with the father of her children. Like for a very large percentage of illegal immigrants, it would have been the greatest mercy and the most wonderful thing if somebody had sent her back home to Canada when she first started on this illegal journey. She’s now 34, completely dependent on this absolute douche of her boyfriend who owns her like a slave master. The moment she misbehaves, he’ll shop her out to ICE and find a newer version of her to cook and clean for him. And he’ll keep the kids, of course.

People’s brains are infected with choice theory and they honestly think that every illegal in the country is benefitting from being here.

Instead of going in circles and repeating the same thing, let’s look at this from a different angle. People want neoliberalism so badly that they are willing to lay down their lives for it. They are willing to accept the most terrible forms of torture for it. Here is an example:

Leftist women are conditioned with some next-level chooran.

Writer at ‘The Nation’, a left magazine was gang-raped by 6 men yet she didn’t report them to police because she is principally against the concept of police and prison 🙃🙃 pic.twitter.com/ll7A26X02T

— Monica Verma (@TrulyMonica) January 25, 2026

Being gang raped for 6 hours is something that a neoliberal subject uses to develop her personal brand and to monetize. It doesn’t get any clearer than this. You’ll have to tear the gang rapists, the Somali “learing centers” and all the rest of it from her cold dead hands. She loves all of it and she won’t let it go. She’s not experiencing “suicidal empathy.” This woman’s world has no empathy in it at all. She’s in the business of monetizing the emotions we leak as we recoil from the story in horror.

When we see welfare become a criminalized free-for-all, when cities turn into shantytown dumps, when the middle class remains a distant memory and child-bearing is enthroned as class privilege, let’s remember that this came about because people passionately wanted it. Let’s remember that they wanted it so badly that some of them went into the streets and laid down their lives for it. And they wouldn’t do it if alongside with everything it takes away it didn’t give them something so big, so enjoyable that no sacrifice would be too small.