The Shaggy Titan

The Other Solzhenitsyn: Telling the Truth About a Misunderstood Writer and Thinker
by Daniel J. Mahoney

St. Augustine's Press, 2014
(255 pages, $30.00, hardcover)

reviewed by James A. Altena

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is one of my few heroes. I first discovered him in high school, on the occasion of his forced exile from the USSR. Beginning with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, I immediately devoured all his available novels and The Gulag Archipelago as soon as it appeared in English, knowing that I had discovered a literary and moral giant. The extraordinary courage of his 1978 Harvard commencement address, which marked the beginning of his ongoing denigration by many Western intellectuals and pundits—mostly political liberals, but also including some conservatives such as Norman Podhoretz and Richard Pipes—only confirmed his stature to me.

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James A. Altena is the associate editor of Fanfare magazine, a comprehensive bimonthly periodical for reviews of classical music recordings. He is a member of All Saints Episcopal Church in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, and is pursuing a Ph.D. in church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, Pennsylvania.

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