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ST. PETERSBURG
More Books
The Art and Architecture of Russia
• George Hamilton
• Judith Gordon
ART & ARCHITECTURE •
1992 •
PAPER
• 482 PAGES
An informed, engaging and comprehensive history of the art and architecture of Western Russia from the beginnings of Kievan Rus through the revolution and Russian empire, first published in 1954. It includes a splendid discussion of the development of St. Petersburg in the 18th and 19th centuries. Organized largely by geography, it's a good handbook for the traveler that goes beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg to include Kiev, Novgorod, Pskov and Vladimir-Suzdal. With 314 black-and-white illustrations.
(RUS38, $35.00) |
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Black Earth, A Journey Through Russia After the Fall
• Andrew Meier
CULTURAL PORTRAIT •
2005 •
PAPER
• 516 PAGES
Meier, a journalist who covered Russia for Time from 1996-2001, ventures outside the Kremlin for this portrait of Russia and of the lives of typical Russians since the collapse of the Soviet Union. He travels South, North, East and West to war-torn Chechnya, the industrial northern city of Norilisk, forgotten Sakhalin, and progressive St. Petersburg. An insightful portrait much in the spirit of David Remnick's Resurrection.
(RUS236, $16.95) |
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Catherine the Great
• Henri Troyat
BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR •
1994 •
PAPER
• 377 PAGES
One of the world's most notable biographers creates a grand portrait of a great monarch. This Russian-born French biographer of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Turgenev, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Gogol weaves a rich tapestry of history that reads like a novel. Seizing power from her husband and second cousin Peter III, Catherine fights and beats the Turks, defeats rebellion, partitions Poland, raises the prestige of Russia in Europe by corresponding with French philosophers and buying western art, and brings vast new lands under her 34-year reign.
(RUS10, $20.00) |
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Catherine the Great, A Short History
• Isabel De Madariaga
BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR •
2002 •
PAPER
• 240 PAGES
A brief, balanced biography of Catherine the Great, covering her life, influence and times. Written by a noted scholar of Russian history, the book offers an excellent overview of the political and social climate of 18th-century Russia. De Madariaga begins the book with a short, vigorous chapter: Catherine seizes power. The woman who ruled from 1762 until her death in 1796 had no claim to the throne. For serious students, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great, also by De Madariaga, offers more detail. A Yale Note Bene paperback.
(RUS105, $14.95) |
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A Century of Ambivalence, The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present
• Zvi Y. Gitelman
HISTORY •
2001 •
PAPER
• 321 PAGES
A strikingly illustrated history of Jewish life in Russia, originally published in 1988 and expanded for this second edition. With two new chapters on the fate of Jews and Judaism in the former Soviet Union, 200 black-and-white photographs from YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and three maps. Zvi Gitelman is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.
(RUS172, $24.95) |
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Dreams of My Russian Summers
• Andrei Makine
LITERATURE •
2011 •
PAPER
• 256 PAGES
In this widely praised first novel, Makine writes evocatively of the coming of age of a young boy in the Soviet Union of the 1960's and 70's.
(RUS266, $14.95) |
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Fodor's Moscow and St. Petersburg
• Salwa Jabado
GUIDEBOOK •
2011 •
PAPER
• 384 PAGES
This comprehensive guide in the Fodor's Gold series features solid practical information on sights, excursions, restaurants, hotels and nightlife. With a chapter on the cities of the Golden Ring. Fifth edition.
(RUS03, $19.99) |
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How Russia Shaped the Modern World: From Art to Anti-Semitism, Ballet to Bolshevism
• Steven G. Marks
HISTORY •
2004 •
PAPER
• 408 PAGES
This wide-ranging book focuses on Russian contributions to art, literature, politics and ideas of 19th- and 20th-century Europe and America. Marks considers artists and thinkers including Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Diaghilev, Stanislavsky, Kandinsky, and Malevich.
(RUS245, $29.95) |
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Nicholas and Alexandra
• Robert Massie
HISTORY •
2000 •
PAPER
• 613 PAGES
This is a fairy tale of true love turned tragic as Tsar Nicholas II, the handsome ruler of one-sixth of the earth, carries on the royal Russian tradition of marrying a German princess, Alexandra of Hesse. Their union produces four daughters and a hemophiliac son, the tsarevitch Alexis, whose disease only the evil monk Rasputin can treat. The stage is set for the downfall of the Romanov dynasty and imperial Russia and the coming of Communism. This entertaining and well-researched history traces the royal relationship and explores how a disease determined the destiny of rulers, the disintegration of the empire, and the course of Russian history.
(RUS69, $20.00) |
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Pavlovsk, The Life of a Russian Palace
• 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. With archival and modern color photographs. Among the books many pleasures is the story the courage of those who fought to save the palace in the wake of WWII.
(RUS154, $28.00) |
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Petersburg
• David McDuff
• Andrei Bely
LITERATURE •
2011 •
PAPER
• 624 PAGES
The "New York Times Book Review" calls this novel, written in 1916, the "most important, most influential, and most perfectly realized Russian novel written in the 20th century." Bely conjures a whirlwind of impressions and impulses in this kinetic meditation on the nature of the city. In an unabridged translation that captures the rhythms of the Russian original.
(RUS134, $17.00) |
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Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution
• Katarina Clark
CULTURAL PORTRAIT •
1998 •
PAPER
• 384 PAGES
A case study of the cultural changes in St. Petersburg in the years 1913-1931 and how they coincided with the Russian Revolution. The author tries to discern how and why Stalinist culture arose, by looking at a variety of sources (from archived material to films and novels of the time) and offering her own revisionist theories. A focused and detailed analysis for those interested in the intellectual and artistic communities of the period.
(RUS43, $30.00) |
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The Ransom of Russian Art
• John McPhee
CULTURAL PORTRAIT •
1998 •
PAPER
• 192 PAGES
A fascinating, illustrated account of the underground of Russia during the Cold War. In a break from his series on North American geology, McPhee has chosen to profile Norton Townsend Dodge, a man he originally met on a train, and an unusual collector of dissident Russian art. With his typically compelling style, McPhee writes about a professor who, according to his wife, "couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag," yet managed to smuggle thousands of important works out of Russia. The book includes dozens of color reproductions.
(RUS91, $12.00) |
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The Romanovs, The Final Chapter
• Robert Massie
HISTORY •
1995 •
PAPER
• 308 PAGES
Written like a good detective story, this riveting scientific thriller examines the evidence and international dispute linking the skeletons exhumed in 1991 in Siberia with the last of the Romanovs killed in the early period of the Russian Revolution. Are these the remains of the last tsar and his family, and was Anna Anderson really the Grand Duchess Anastasia as she claimed? This book provides definitive answers to one of the most enduring and intriguing mysteries of the 20th century.
(RUS14, $16.00) |
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Rough Guide St. Petersburg
• Dan Richardson
GUIDEBOOK •
2008 •
PAPER
• 534 PAGES
An extensive guide to St. Petersburg in the hip, literate and very informative Rough Guide style. It's divided cleanly between practical information and illuminating background on culture and history.
(RUS372, $18.99) |
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Food in Russian History and Culture
• Joyce Toomre
• Musya Glants
FOOD •
1997 •
PAPER
Food is the chosen lens for the 14 cultural historians who contributed essays to this scholarly, wide-ranging book. Topics range from Tolstoy's vegetarianism to starvation under Stalin to Soviet restaurants.
(RUS143, $34.95) |
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Russian Experiment in Art, 1863-1922
• Camilla Gray
• Marian Burleigh-Motley
ART & ARCHITECTURE •
1998 •
PAPER
• 324 PAGES
A handsome illustrated volume in the "World of Art" series, this book documents a critical period in the history of Russian art in a series of insightful essays and hundreds of color illustrations. Organized chronologically, it's an excellent guide to the extraordinary art of Kasimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, and other masters of the Russian avant-garde. Completely revised for this edition.
(RUS17, $19.95) |
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To the Finland Station
• Edmond Wilson
HISTORY •
2003 •
PAPER
• 507 PAGES
This wide-ranging, heartfelt tribute to the power of history takes, as its ostensible subject, the origins of the Russian revolution. Originally published in 1940, Wilson famously shows his enthusiasm for the great Soviet experiment and, especially, Lenin. It's a fascinating book which ranges from the French revolution, Engels and Marx, to Lenin and Trotsky (who Wilson disliked).
(RUS206, $19.95) |
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A Traveller's History of Russia
• Peter Neville
HISTORY •
2006 •
PAPER
• 336 PAGES
An impressively compact, lively survey of Russian history from the coming of the Slavs to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
(RUS47, $14.95) |
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Valse des Fleurs, A Day in St Petersburg in 1868
• Sacheverell Sitwell
BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR •
2000 •
PAPER
• 151 PAGES
"There will be a ball in the Winter Palace tonight!" So begins this extended meditation on court life by Sitwell (1897-1988), the poet, critic -- and brother of Edith. Sitwell composed this celebration of the city as Leningrad was under siege in 1941. In this extended essay Sitwell conjures snow and gilt, courtiers, music and pageantry, a military parade, sledges, sables, and Cossacks during the reign of Alexander II.
(RUS209, $29.95) |
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Letters from Russia
• Marquis De Custine
• Anka Muhlstein
TRAVEL NARRATIVE •
2002 •
PAPER
• 654 PAGES
An authoritative edition of Astolphe de Custine's scathing, insightful -- and observant -- account of the people, culture and politics of St. Petersburg and Moscow circa 1839. George Kennan called this book the best thing ever written about Russia, no doubt in part because of de Custine's trenchant observations on Russian despotism (the Soviets also banned the book). This is the 1843 translation, edited, revised and with an introduction by de Custine's biographer, Anka Muhlstein.
(RUS166, $24.95) |
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Tsar, The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra
• 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) |
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