Word: rk
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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ATATÜRK by Lord Kinross. 615 pages. Morrow...
Kemal Atatürk was the 20th century prototype of the progressive dictator. He was a man on horseback who broke the hegemony of London and Paris, overset a degenerate regime, achieved a social and political revolution and established a humanitarian tyranny...
Strange to say, no reliable study of this extraordinary individual has ever been written in English. The defect is now remedied by Britain's Lord Kinross, a Turcophile (Within the Taurus) who has known some of Atatürk's principal associates for many years. In this acute and readable biography, Kinross sometimes oversimplifies the period but never underplays the complex and astonishing nature of the beast he is examining...
...complexities are elucidated - little is known about Atatürk's emotional problems, and Kinross is too responsible to speculate. He simply presents the available facts and sets them in a good light. Kemal Atatürk emerges as a political genius immingled with a moral moron, a man with the intellect of a Western liberal and the disposition of an Oriental despot, a loving father to his country all day long, but after sunset a dedicated lecher and incorrigible lush...
Piasters & Perfection. Some of these traits were evident quite early in the character of Mustafa, as the young Atatürk was called. His father, who ran a lumber business in Salonica, died in 1889 when the boy was eight, and left the family without a piaster. Little Mustafa made a fierce resolve: "I am going to be somebody." At twelve, against his mother's orders, he took entrance examinations for a government military school, passed them, and then hectored her till she signed his admission papers. He was a proud, cold, brilliant boy who could follow several conversations...