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Title: Too glib and superficial to be informative!
Review: I read this book when it first appeared some ten years ago, having read much of the other work on P. (books by Israel Nestyev, Victor Seroff, etc.). Indeed there is a lack of good literature on P. in English. Unfortunately, Robinson's book is sadly written-down and dumbed-down for a sub-TIME-Magazine reading public. It is not necessary to do so to write a good, readable, un-academic biography (compare the superb bio of poet Marina Tsvetaeva by Viktoria Schweitzer). So this book wasted a fine opportunity: its evaluations of both life and works are simplistic. Robinson claims to be "above" the ideological divisions of Cold War Prokofiev scholarship (e.g. pre-Stalinist vs. Socialist Realist Prokofiev), but he does not engage this problem at all, at least not in any thoughtful way, and blurs over it with bland cheery platitudes. Disappointing!
