My dad was a history major and recently had to move to a nursing home and give away his large collection of books. He asked me to get him a book on Stalin (he has read a lot already on him). Any recommendations? Maybe something written in the last 20 years as I'm guessing the books he's read are from before then. I don't think length of book is an issue. He seems to enjoy very thick books!😁 Thank you!!
It's not done yet (volume 3 is allegedly supposed to be released in October), and it's huge, but frankly Stephen Kotkin's Stalin biography is your best bet. Volume One is Paradoxes of Power: 1878-1928 and Volume Two is Waiting for Hitler: 1929-1941.
The biography has been critically praised and pretty much covers all research on the topic to date (and each volume has 100+ pages of endnotes). It takes a mostly mainstream approach to its subject matter, and so the professional criticisms have been relatively small and focused.
A major part of Kotkin's biography is that it's not just a straight biography. Especially in the first volume, there are large stretches of Stalin's early years where we know little, or he wasn't doing much of any real interest. Kotkin therefore makes sure to ground Stalin's life in the broader history of the Russian Empire/Soviet Union and even the globe that was happening around him at the time.
Probably a good runner up option that is shorter would be Simon Sebag Montefiore's Young Stalin and Court of the Red Tsar. Montefiore focuses much more on the biography at the expense of broader history, and also gets a little more gossipy.