Mr. Davies became United States Ambassador to Soviet Russia late in 1936 and served in Moscow during a fateful period in Soviet history. A lawyer and business man, projected suddenly into the maelstrom of international power politics, Mr. Davies shows himself in these highly illuminating memoirs to have been a cannier judge of men and events than many a professional diplomat. He took his job seriously, travelled about the country extensively, and talked with all conditions of men from Stalin down to the lowly mujik. The result -- pieced together from his reports to the State Department, from his diary and from personal letters -- is one of the best informed books to appear in recent years on Soviet Russia.
