A review by jpowerj
Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

4.0

Pretty interesting book, with lots of beautiful chapters, but has two issues which lead me to deduct a star: (1) uses hilariously big/obscure words that seem to serve no purpose whatsoever besides adding syllables/obscurity (2) lots of plot points seemed to sort of fizzle out, so that by the end of the book a bunch of characters/subplots I was interested in seeing developed never actually got developed. However, if you read it as a collection of vignettes that show peeks of Soviet life in the 50s, and you make sure to read the footnotes (the most interesting part of the book!), there's a ton of good stuff here! Definitely makes me want to read more about Soviet economic planning