Briar Club

For maybe the first 70% of the book, I'd have rated it a solid 4.5 stars; the characters were compelling and engaging. However in the last 30% of the book, it started to feel like I was reading a government propaganda book about how eeeeeviiiillll the USSR and communists are; how in socialist societies art is forbidden, there is no creative though, and everyone is starving and miserable and yet still somehow willing to fight and die for their society and ideology. On the other hand however, the United States is this bastion of glory and greatness and the land of opportunity. That's it. No commentary on the brutal American sanctions on the USSR that led to so much starvation. No comment on how during the great depression that devastated the working class of the west, the USSR economy actually was holding strong and their people were actually much better cared for than the working class in the west.