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St. Petersburg

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Get the featured set of Essential Reading, our top picks of what to read, and get free shipping on anything else you order.

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Eyewitness Guide St. Petersburg

by Eyewitness Guides

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2010
• PAPER
• 264 PAGES

With excellent local maps and site plans, this outstanding visual guide introduces the culture, history and attractions of St. Petersburg. (RUS87, $25.00)

Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia

by W. Bruce Lincoln

• HISTORY
• 2002
• PAPER
• 432 PAGES

A wonderfully written, informative portrait of St. Petersburg, focusing on the city's development in the 18th and 19th centuries as Russia's "window on the West." Highly recommended for travelers with an interest in the character and significance of the city and its monuments. (RUS128, $19.95)

Peter the Great, His Life and World

by Robert Massie

• BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
• 2011
• PAPER
• 914 PAGES

In this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Massie portrays the giant of history who transformed Russia from backwater tsardom into a major empire. (RUS48, $21.00)

Land of the Firebird, The Beauty of Old Russia

by Suzanne Massie

• HISTORY
• 1995
• PAPER
• 496 PAGES
• HARD TO FIND ELSEWHERE

Massie traces both miniscule details and larger movements in pre-revolutionary Russian art, literature and daily life in this affectionate overview of 19th-century palaces, courts and culture. (RUS21, $35.00)

St. Petersburg Map

by Borch Maps

• MAP

A detailed, laminated city plan of St. Petersburg, with street index inset. Place names are in transliterated English. (RUS89, $7.95)

 

Also Recommended

Literary St. Petersburg, A Guide to the City and Its Writers

by Elaine Blaire

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2007
• PAPER
• 137 PAGES

Blair shows St. Petersburg through the words, museums and haunts of 15 writers, including Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Nabokov. (RUS406, $16.95)

Black Earth, A Journey Through Russia After the Fall

by Andrew Meier

• CULTURAL PORTRAIT
• 2005
• PAPER
• 516 PAGES

Meier ventures far outside the Kremlin gates for this account of the lives typical Russians since the collapse of the Soviet Union. A vivid, insightful portrait. (RUS236, $16.95)

Lenin's Tomb

by David Remnick

• HISTORY
• 1994
• PAPER
• 588 PAGES

A gripping eyewitness tale of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Remnick, the Washington Post reporter on the scene, combines fine historical scholarship with great storytelling. (RUS07, $17.00)

Pavlovsk, The Life of a Russian Palace

by Suzanne Massie

• CULTURAL PORTRAIT
• 1990
• PAPER
• 393 PAGES

A biography of the palace from its role in 18th-century Tsarist Russia to the revolution, public park, Nazi military headquarters and restoration. It's a great story, well told by Massie, who also wrote Land of the Firebird. (RUS154, $28.00)

Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution

by Katarina Clark

• CULTURAL PORTRAIT
• 1998
• PAPER
• 384 PAGES

A case study of cultural changes in Petersburg in the years 1913-1931 and how they coincided with the Russian Revolution. (RUS43, $30.00)

Russia, A Concise History

by Ronald Hingley

• HISTORY
• 2003
• PAPER
• 224 PAGES

Well-known scholar Hingley sketches Russia's multiple transformations from her illiterate, pagan, Slavic roots to a multi-ethnic empire in this highly readable, well-illustrated brief history. (RUS04, $19.95)

St. Petersburg, A Cultural History

by Solomon Volkov | Antonina Bouis

• HISTORY
• 1995
• PAPER
• 598 PAGES

This intimate cultural history, written by a native historian and musician of the city, includes profiles of its artists and writers over the last 300 years. (RUS72, $38.95)

The 900 Days, The Siege of Leningrad

by Harrison Salisbury

• HISTORY
• 2003
• PAPER
• 640 PAGES

Salisbury's detailed account of the three-year-long Nazi blockade of Leningrad (now St Petersburg). (RUS235, $27.00)

The Most Intentional City, St. Petersburg in the Reign of Catherine the Great

by George E. Munro

• HISTORY
• 2008
• HARD COVER
• 372 PAGES
• OUT OF PRINT

Munro, professor of history and popular study leader, traces the transformation of St. Petersburg from the city as planned by Peter the Great to a thriving European metropolis. (RUS401, $69.50)

Romanov Riches, Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

by Solomon Volkov

• ART & ARCHITECTURE
• 2011
• HARD COVER
• 274 PAGES

Volkov effortlessly unwinds the twisted relationship between art and the royal family from the rise of the Romanovs in 1613 to their downfall in 1917, including a chapter on Catherine the Great and her era. (RUS473, $30.00)

St. Petersburg, Architecture of the Tsars

by Dmitri Shvidkovsky | Alexander Orloff

• ART & ARCHITECTURE
• 1996
• HARD COVER
• 360 PAGES

This definitive book presents Baroque masterpieces of Peter the Great, Neoclassic confections of Catherine the Great and Art Nouveau glitter of Nicholas II in splendid color photographs. (RUS152, $95.00)

The Art and Architecture of Russia

by George Hamilton | Judith Gordon

• ART & ARCHITECTURE
• 1992
• PAPER
• 482 PAGES

An elegantly written introduction to the art and architecture of Russia. Published in 1954, it's a good handbook for the traveler that goes beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg. Includes 314 black-and-white illustrations. (RUS38, $35.00)

The Hermitage Collections

by Olegs Yakovlevichs Neverov

• ART & ARCHITECTURE
• 2010
• BOXED
• 640 PAGES

This sumputous visual survey celebrates the museum, its history and collections. (RUS471, $95.00)

The Hermitage, Masterpieces

by Scala Masterpieces

• ART & ARCHITECTURE
• 2008
• PAPER
• 157 PAGES
• OUT OF PRINT

This slim book, featuring color illustrations of hundreds of important works, is an excellent guide to European paintings at the Hermitage. (RUS90, $29.95)

Catherine the Great, A Short History

by Isabel De Madariaga

• BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
• 2002
• PAPER
• 240 PAGES

A brief survey of the reign of Catherine the Great that nicely balances biography with descriptions of the economic, political and social life of the period. (RUS105, $14.95)

Letters from Russia

by Marquis De Custine | Anka Muhlstein

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2002
• PAPER
• 654 PAGES

An authoritative edition of Astolphe de Custine's observant, scathing and insightful account of travels in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1839. (RUS166, $24.95)

Speak, Memory

by Vladimir Nabokov

• BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
• 1989
• PAPER
• 316 PAGES

Nabokov's richly imagined memoir wonderfully evokes cultural life among the well-to-do in turn-of-the-century St. Petersburg. (RUS28, $16.00)

Tsar, The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra

by Peter Kurth | Peter Christopher | Edvard Radzinsky

• BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
• 1998
• PAPER
• 230 PAGES

A tribute to the last of the Romanovs, featuring a treasure trove of never-published photographs and illuminating text. It brings to life in sumptuous detail the tumultuous life and times of Nicholas and Alexandra. Masterful. (RUS79, $29.99)

A Traveller's Companion to St. Petersburg

by Laurence Kelly

• ANTHOLOGY
• 2003
• PAPER
• 285 PAGES

This illuminating selection of readings, enhanced by maps and and engravings, covers the city from its foundation to the fall of the Tsars. Includes chapters on early days, palaces and museums, politics and iconic places throughout the city. (RUS214, $16.95)

City of Thieves

by David Benioff

• LITERATURE
• 2009
• PAPER
• 272 PAGES

David Benioff (screenwriter for The Kite Runner and Wolverine) turns his grandfather's stories of surviving the infamous Siege of Leningrad into a wise and touching novel of coming of age that's hard to put down. Seventeen-year-old Lev and his charismatic buddy Koly are sent out by their German captors to bring back a dozen eggs, just the start of a gripping odyssey. (RUS380, $15.00)

Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoevsky | David McDuff

• LITERATURE
• 2002
• PAPER
• 647 PAGES

Dostoevsky's thriller of murder and redemption is redolent of St. Petersburg's atmosphere. A cornerstone of Russian literature, and one of the greatest detective stories ever told. (RUS18, $15.00)

From Karamzin to Bunin: An Anthology of Russian Short Stories

by Carl Proffer

• ANTHOLOGY
• 1969
• PAPER
• 468 PAGES

A broad selection of Russian literary works from the earliest prose to the years before the revolution, featuring reliable translations of masterpieces from Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol, and more. (RUS08, $24.00)

Life and Fate

by Vasily Grossman

• LITERATURE
• 2006
• PAPER
• 896 PAGES

Interweaving a transfixing account of the battle of Stalingrad with the story of a single middle-class family, the Shaposhnikovs, scattered by fortune from Germany to Siberia, Vasily Grossman fashions an immense, intricately detailed tapestry depicting a time of both unimaginable horror and even stranger hope. (RUS299, $24.95)

Petersburg

by David McDuff | Andrei Bely

• LITERATURE
• 2011
• PAPER
• 624 PAGES

This novel, written in 1916, conjures a whirlwind of impressions and impulses in a kinetic meditation on the nature of the city. (RUS134, $17.00)

The Madonnas of Leningrad

by Debra Dean

• LITERATURE
• 2007
• PAPER
• 231 PAGES

Dean effortlessly interweaves two epochs of a woman's life -- Marina's wartime experiences as a young guide at the Hermitage during the siege of Leningrad and her life as an 82-year-old Seattle resident struggling with Alzheimer's. A remarkable debut. (RUS360, $13.99)

The Master of Petersburg

by J.M. Coetzee

• LITERATURE
• 1995
• PAPER
• 250 PAGES

Dostoyevski becomes a literary character in Coetzee's novel of 19th-century Russia, where he is ensnared in a mystery that illuminates the underworld of pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg. (RUS200, $16.00)

The Siege

by Helen Dunmore

• LITERATURE
• 2002
• PAPER
• 304 PAGES

The 1941 siege of Leningrad is the backdrop for this affecting novel of one Russian family's attempts to survive during the darkest hours of World War II. (RUS258, $13.00)

To the Hermitage

by Malcolm Bradbury

• LITERATURE
• 2002
• PAPER
• 510 PAGES
• OUT OF PRINT

Bradbury's spirited, time-spanning novel, involving French philosopher Diderot, Catherine the Great, a 1990s English professor in St. Petersburg and contemporary politics. (RUS153, $16.95)

Zugzwang, A Novel

by Ronan Bennett

• MYSTERY
• 2008
• PAPER
• 273 PAGES

This historical thriller set in 1914 St. Petersburg has it all: an intricate plot, colorful characters, chess masters, Bolsheviks and a famous psychoanalyst. (RUS370, $15.00)

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