Trotsky: Exile and Murder in Mexico

Patenaude will discuss his new book, Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary, which describes Leon Trotsky's last years in Mexico in the late 1930s. At the center of this gripping and tragic story are Trotsky's tumultuous friendship with painter Diego Rivera; his affair with Rivera's wife, artist Frida Kahlo; and his torment as his family and comrades become victims of the Great Terror and Stalin's assassins close in. Bertrand Patenaude is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a lecturer in History and International Relations at Stanford University. He is the author and editor of several books, including most recently Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary (HarperCollins, 2009).