electronic music and other strange and stealthy inventions

Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage by Albert Glinsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is not just a fascinating and detailed biography of one of the earliest pioneers in electronic music and other strange and stealthy inventions. It is also a tale of life as a Soviet national in the US during the Great Depression and then his resulting gruesome life in Soviet Russia as a scientist and engineer convicted of being an enemy of the state during Stalin's reign of terror. I had either forgotten from history class, or never learned the grim details, but Stalin's Russia was certainly one of the darkest and most evil times and places of the 20th century. Theremin's clever intellect and rugged resolve somehow carries him out the other side of the collapse of the Soviet empire. His story is well told and documented, and is a must read for electronic music fans as well as students of history and technology during the cold war.

Theremin playing his revolutionary instrument (YouTube)



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