Bloodlands

4.5

Reading this book is a frustrating experience.
Two main complaints:

1. Very often, the same fact is repeatedly stated several times in the span of a few paragraphs, each time phrased slightly differently.
This I found incredibly annoying, and it has several annoying results:
A. A sensation that your time is being wasted by too little new information per page.
B. Paragraphs are nebulous, as if the author didn't have time or patients to complete the collation process...
C. Most significantly, it gives an annoying feeling that the writing isn't 100% fact driven. It automatically switched me to sophistry look-out mode, and every time I read a surprising fact I felt the need to look it up, as if I was reading a newsstand opinion column.

2. It seems that the author explores the facts from some kind of moral high-ground. The genocidal totalitarian policies explored in the book are so extremely inhumane and despicable that the moralizing tone of the author's narration in unnecessary and distracts from the facts, adding yet another reason to feel like some fact look-up might be called for.

These two issues result in the feeling one gets when reading a newspaper editorial or opinion column, or a book with some philosophical, non-factual agenda. To be perfectly clear, I have absolutely no doubt that every word written by the author is backed by facts. But when reading a history non-fiction book, a feeling of insecurity regarding the factual integrity of the writing is enough to make the reading experience unpleasant.