"Trotsky in New York, 1917"

“Fun” and “Trotsky” are not a natural pairing, but that's what you get with Kenneth Ackerman's historical reconstruction of the wily Bolshevik's time in The Big Apple.

In a scrupulously researched book, Ackerman reconstructs Leon Trotsky's 10-week stay in New York City and makes some far-reaching claims about the importance of the layover that, at least, invite discussion.

Basically thrown out of Europe, Trotsky hit New York in 1917. The historian provides some background on the rebel's life prior to getting on that transatlantic crossing and knows a little about what happened on board as well.

As the book's subtitle – “A Radical on the Eve of Revolution” – suggests, Trotsky arrived anonymous, but would leave with his name on everybody's lips as turmoil in Russia created the opening he and Vladimir Lenin had been anticipating for years.

Ackerman relishes his twin topics and brings “Trotsky's New York” to life visually, factually, sensually.

The noisy isle crowded with Yiddish-speaking, Russian Tsar-hating Jews, the elevated trains hammering out the urban machine soundtrack to industrial Manhattan, other flavors and phantoms are successfully summonsed in this engaging text.

The author traces Trotsky's steps: his rental in a middle-class section of the Bronx; his day job at a Russian-language left-wing rag (and debates therein); his interactions with socialists both American and foreign, his associates both old world and new.

Together, in New York and Trotsky, Ackerman ably helps himself to not one, but two great historical players so that, although we're dealing with footnoted, historical nonfiction, a lively and, yes, even fun, portrait of man and place in time emerges.

We might call it “Ragtime” for communists save for the fact Ackerman hews closer to an academic style than does E.L. Doctorow in his intentionally literary turn.

The portrait of Trotsky is that of a verbal and ideological bulldog, an insolent intellectual, a man convinced of his cause's correctness, intolerant of any divergence from his recipe for violent revolution.

The author does a bang-up job of resuscitating American socialist Morris Hillquit from the dustbin of history through the replay of his policy battle with Trotsky over how the American left would respond to the country's entry into World War I.

Hillquit prevailed... barely. Ackerman suggests that in his confrontations with the milder reformist and those of his ilk in New York, Trotsky mapped the future of American left-radicalism for decades to come.

That, and other claims the author makes regarding the impact of Trotsky's stay are plausible and provide fodder for debate and further scholarship.

The book sheds a novel light on the Russian Revolution, which looms quite so large given Trotsky's decisive role and Ackerman can't resist commenting on the too-big subject. Here he falls into a bit of rote anti-communism.

It's unavoidable that the horrors of Stalin, the gulags, show-trials, pogroms, etc., be raised, but there is no consideration of what good, if any, Trotsky's efforts generated so that Ackerman short-shrifts his own subject.

How history treats us! Hillquit, a decent human being and worldly character is forgotten, but the Trotsky produced here, who wrought nothing but heartache upon those he or his ideas touched, is the historical standout.

Without a counter-discussion, Trotsky comes across as a man of multiple talents, all of which were misapplied in the creation of a sanguinary communist dictatorship. But there were many who believed in the Soviet Union and still others who lament its passing. Their take on Trotsky is missing.

Which is to say, Ackerman should have stopped where his title does: in New York. The post-Gotham section is not inconsiderable and removes the reader from a curious epoch that is the book's strength.

Yes, following the trajectories of certain players, and Trotsky family members, in revolutionary Russia serves a purpose and provides the reader with satisfying – or mortifying – closure.

Still, the author would have lost nothing and gained a more cohesive “whole” by sticking with his attractive, almost stylized account and cutting Trotsky loose at the New York piers; letting him float off into a history left for books written and unwritten alike.

"Komantcia" by Harold Keith

Harold Keith's adventure novel-cum-social-study renders an arresting portrait of Comanche territory or what the rival Ute tribe called “Komantcia.”

Our guide through this wild land is Pedro Pavon, a world-class guitarist on tour in northern Mexico, captured by the warlike tribe after watching his mother be scalped.

This is a story of slavery, a slavery to which many settlers were subjected during the annexation of Indian lands by the European cultures.

Keith's well-researched narrative presents tribal cruelty and an unforgiving southwestern landscape as insurmountable obstacles to the protagonist's escape. If you were captured, you stay captured.

Pavon is subjected to the denigrating whims of his abusive master Whip Belt until his traits of Christian charity and physical courage spark a trade to one of the band's most important chiefs.

From here on Pavon begins a dance with his desire to get the heck out and another he feels for a Cheyenne named Willow Girl.

The Comanche launch Pedro onto a path toward themselves. His freedom to roam increases only with

a corresponding wane to his interest in escaping.

That's the set-up without spoiler.

“Komantcia” was first published in 1965 and appears to be out of print now.

Keith combined the true story of a captive Mexican boy's absorption into Comanche life with his own profound interest in the Tribe's ways.

He cites as primary sources Colonel Richard Irving Dodge's “The Plains of the Great West,” and “The Comanches, Lords of the South Plains,” by Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel.

The book's narrative arc and English usage are of a conventional kind, yet Keith infuses his enthusiasm – his own enchanting really – into this tale of a unique human race, this reconstruction and recording of a disappeared world.

While intended as “adventure writing for boys,” the story stands out for its excellent scholarship and is sophisticated enough for any adult curious about the the southwest, its mixed Spanish/Anglo/Indian heritage and natural beauty.