Red Plenty

An unusual work blending fiction with history, this is the story of a specific time and place: the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, when its planned economy promised more prosperity than American capitalism. Historical figures like Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Vitalevich Kantorovich, the only Soviet to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, mingle with fictional scientists and mathematicians to show the struggle among differing views of how best to steer the Soviet economy. The book vividly captures debates about progress and pricing that sometimes boggle the mind, such as when resources are used to make products no one wants, and it also shows how the political machine chews up those who dare to protest. While the large number of people represented can be a bit overwhelming and, individually, are so interesting that readers are left wanting to know more about their fates, Spufford (The Child That Books Built) presents an amazingly clear portrait of complex economic policies that ultimately did not work.