Rosemary Sullivan

This book became quite controversial shortly after its publication. Lots of critics argued that the conclusion of who betrayed the people hiding at Prinsengracht 263 couldn't be certain, so long after the fact, and that it was irresponsible to accuse anyone.

I found the case that the team made compelling, but of course I heard only their argument. Nonetheless, they put forth a plausible argument.

Whether they're right or not, the book includes a lot of detail on the conduct of the various police forces and the occupying German troops and administrators during the war, as well as some good explanations about the Dutch resistance and how it worked. There's good detail on collaborators as well.

I do have some complaints. The author talks about "the Microsoft AI" and "the AI database," but never describes the technology. I'm confident that there wasn't any magical tech at hand; they just digitized a bunch of stuff, made it easy to search, maybe wrote some good data science code to comb through it, look for patterns. It was good work, no doubt, but calling it "AI" seems like an attempt to legitimize their results because an artificial intelligence did the work. Not true -- it was a lot of investigative work by people.

I found the book both interesting and informative. I've spent a great deal of time in Amsterdam and know the city well. I now have a wealth of new locations and events to weave into the story of this place.… (mais)

For me, this Stalin's Daughter had two parts - Svetlana's life in Russia and her life after she defected. I picked up the book to read the first part and found myself slogging through many chapters of the second part. However, once I committed to reading the whole book (it's 600 pages not counting the references at the end), I found myself becoming more interested in the incredibly impulsive life of Stalin's only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva.

Author Rosemary Sullivan's research is impressive and her writing style smooth and conversational.
While I think Sullivan did an amazing and thorough job - the kind of biography Alliluyeva deserves - as a reader, much of the second part felt unnecessary and was frustrating to read. (After defecting from Russia, her life becomes incredibly socially complicated and it seems that all spats and slights are documented in this book.)… (mais)