A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940
Written by William R. Trotter
Narrated by Matthew Lloyd Davies
4/5
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About this audiobook
William R. Trotter
William R. (Bill) Trotter wrote his first novel at the age of 14. It was not publishable, of course, but a senior editor at Viking Press liked it well enough to become a valued mentor over the next ten years. Since that time, he hasn’t looked back in forty-five years. Trotter eschewed the traditional graduate-school MFA route to literary respectability (and job security), choosing instead the goal of actually supporting his family entirely by writing. For a long time, he was only partially successful at this, but he finally said farewell to part-time “real jobs” in 1983 and has, in fact, earned his entire living by the sweat of his keyboard ever since. Trotter told an interviewer back in 1994: “I’ve worked in some of the grubbiest neighborhoods of the scribbler’s trade and deployed all my skills and obscene amounts of my time in projects that meant nothing at all to me personally and that most proper Literary Authors would consider demeaning. But my reasoning was this: I would approach every freelance job, no matter how unglamorous it was, with the idea that I could learn something from the work that I could apply, later, to the projects that were personally important; and that I would never submit work-for-hire that I would be ashamed to have my by-line attached to.” That ’s one reason why Trotter has been able to leap successfully from one genre to another. (That’s also the reason why his agent once told him: “You have the most interesting resume in the business, Bill, but that doesn’t necessarily make you marketable!”) To thousands of computer game addicts, he is “The Colonel”, the Senior Writer for “PC Gamer” magazine, whose monthly column about war and strategy games (“The Desktop General”) has run continuously for fifteen years. To fans of the horror and fantasy genres, he’s the respected author of compelling short stories and novellas, whose work has twice been nominated for the prestigious Bram Stoker Award. To aficionados of military history, he’s the author of the best-selling trilogy The Civil War in North Carolina and the definitive English-language history of the Russo-Finnish “Winter War”, A Frozen Hell. To music lovers, professional orchestra players, record collectors, and no small number of well-known conductors, he’s the author of a world-renowned biographer of the great Dimitri Mitropoulos, Priest of Music. To readers of mainstream literature, he’s a witty essayist, a respected book reviewer, and the author of four critically acclaimed novels, one of which has been optioned for a major motion picture. In early 2004, the North Carolina English Teachers’ Association chose him to be the first recipient of a special “Lifetime Achievement Award.” He lives in Greensboro, NC.
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Reviews for A Frozen Hell
87 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very interesting book about a little known piece of history.In 1939 Stalin and Hitler divided up Poland and Russia took the Baltic countries. A democratic Finland was next on Soviet list. Refusing to surrender, Finland was attacked and it's military fought forces up to five times their size. This is the story of that conflict and the help, and lack of help, from the rest of Europe.This history is another well documented example of the tragic impacts of Russian communism and its devastating affect on it's own people and the world.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a very interesting book about a conflict which today is little remembered outside Finland. The opening chapters present a 'potted' history of Finland up until WWII, which then serve as a platform for the coverage of the strategic and political decisions taken by both sides that ultimately, led to war. I found the account of the response of the rest of the world to the unfolding Soviet aggression particularly interesting. The majority of the content deals with the military history of the conflict and provides a very vivid picture of the conditions and suffering of the combatants involved, as well as the order of battle and tactics employed by both sides.I found the authors style very readable but not at the expense of the intellectual rigor of the text. In my opinion, a better read than any of Beevor's offerings about the Eastern front. Highly recommended.
1 person found this helpful