Taubman has received immense praise since the publication of his work. "There were three front-page rave reviews in the L.A. Times, The Washington Post and The New York Times," Taubman said. The Los Angeles Times reviewer wrote, "Taubman is unstinting in his portrayal of [Khrushchev]." The New York Times called the book "a portrait unlikely to be surpassed any time soon in either richness or complexity."
Taubman is thrilled with the positive response. "It feels like a miracle," he said. "Of course I worked long and hard and produced what I think is a good book, but not everyone who works long and hard and produces good work gets so royally rewarded. In that sense, I've been very fortunate," he said.
When he started the project two decades ago, Taubman planned to write a book about Nikita Khrushchev's American policy. As he gathered more information, his topic gradually developed. "I soon found [Khrushchev's] personality more fascinating than his foreign policy, so I opted for a biography instead," he wrote in the preface of the book. "If I had delivered the manuscript in 1989 as originally promised, the result would have been very different from this book."
Khruschev's complex character is of particular interest to Taubman. "[Khrushchev] was a complex man whose story combines triumph and tragedy for his country as well as himself," he wrote in the preface.
"He was complicit in the great evil that Stalin did, and directly responsible for some of his own," Taubman said. "But he was also the author of much good, for example when he helped to release millions from Stalin's prison camps, gave many of Stalin's dead victims back their good names and denounced Stalin himself in the famous 'secret speech' of 1956," he said.
Despite his intense interest in the subject, Taubman experienced a range of emotions about his work during his 20-year researching and writing period. "[The time] was often frustrating, for example, when my editor read half of a very rough first draft, and told me that although my portrait of Khrushchev was convincing, I would have to rewrite everything I had written," said Taubman. "There were days when I felt something close to despair."
Although for most individuals, rewriting half of a 651 page book is enough to turn them from their work in frustration and disgust, Taubman persevered.
Despite the difficulties of writing such a large work, Taubman enjoyed the project. "There were time of elation and euphoria," he explained. Still, finishing was a relief. "By the time I had finished, after more than a decade of work on the book, I was worn out. It was an immense relief to finish the book, although since then I have missed working on it from time to time," he said.
Rewriting was not Taubman's only trouble. "Research and writing are never consistently productive. It is an ongoing struggle to gather the material, make sense of it, organize it, write it up and rewrite it over and over again," he said.
"Dead ends are a regular occupational hazard for writers, whether they are professors or students. You have to get used to them, keep the faith and plow on."
For Taubman, substantial research was essential. He gathered information from "formerly secret Soviet archives," along with interviews from Khruschev's friends, associates, adversaries and family. Taubman traveled to places where Khrushchev lived and worked and he viewed newsreels of Khruschev's interactions with Stalin.