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101 Stories of the Great Ballets • George Balanchine • Francis Mason REFERENCE • 1975 • PAPER • 541 PAGES Scene-by-scene retellings of the most popular ballets from the man who revolutionized the art. Includes production notes, summaries and personal comments for various productions of each ballet. (GEN262, $17.95)
The 900 Days, The Siege of Leningrad • Harrison Salisbury HISTORY • 2003 • PAPER • 640 PAGES Salisbury's detailed account of the Nazi blockade of Leningrad (now St Petersburg). During the siege, the only open route to the city lay across Lake Ladoga, where supplies could be driven on an ice road to the starving city in the winter. Lake Ladoga is included on river voyages between Moscow and St. Petersburg. (RUS235, $27.00)
Alexander Pushkin, The Collected Stories • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin LITERATURE • 1999 • HARD COVER • 548 PAGES An expanded collection of Pushkin's tales, including The Captain's Daughter, The Queen of Spades, Tales of Belkin, and many shorter works. With a long introduction by John Bayley and chronology. Translated and presented by Paul Debreczeny. (RUS196, $25.00)
All the Views Fit to Print, Changing Images of the U.S. In Pravda Political Cartoons, 1917-1991 • Kevin J. McKenna HISTORY • 2001 • PAPER • 256 PAGES Arranged chronologically, this scholarly book dissects Russian political cartoons and their depictions of America. It's an interesting study of the propaganda war waged throughout the 20th century. (RUS179, $49.95)
The Amber Room, The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure • Adrian Levy • Catherine Scott-Clark HISTORY • 2005 • PAPER • 368 PAGES • COMING IN Two investigative journalists on the trail of a roomful of amber from the days of Peter the Great, missing since the Siege of Leningrad in 1941. Scott-Clark and Levy have also written a book on the search for prized Burmese jade (The Stone of Heaven). (RUS244, $16.00)
Among the Russians • Colin Thubron TRAVEL NARRATIVE • 2001 • PAPER • 224 PAGES The marvelous account of a 10,000-mile journey by car from St. Petersburg and the Baltic States south to Georgia and Armenia in 1981. A gifted writer and intrepid traveler, Thubron grapples with the complex Russian identity in this lyrical book, first published as "Where Nights are Longest." Thubron combines his encounters with the interesting characters he meets with Russian history, politics and insightful commentary. Highly recommended. (RUS106, $14.00)
Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana • Stephanie Elizondo Griest BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 2004 • PAPER • 416 PAGES The offbeat memoirs of a native Texan who spent four years as a volunteer in Moscow, a propaganda officer in Beijing, and a belly dancer in Havana. You may have come across Griest's distinctive voice in a collection of Travelers' Tales, where she is a regular contributor. She's young, a witty observer with a way with words, and utterly passionate about travel. This is her first book, as much memoir as travel account, spanning four years and three continents. (RUS242, $14.95)
The Art of the Russian Matryoshka • Rett Ertl ART & ARCHITECTURE • 2003 • HARD COVER • 225 PAGES A thoroughly illustrated portrait of the wooden nesting dolls of Russia. Includes a glossary of Russian and English terms. (RUS323, $49.95)
Balanchine, A Biography • Bernard Taper BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 1996 • PAPER • 448 PAGES Taper sorts out the controversial legacy of the legendary choreographer in this study of his life. A newly added epilogue to this reprint of the original 1984 work examines how ballet been affected by Balanchine's death. (RUS193, $31.95)
The Ballets Russes and Its World • Lynn Garafola CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 1999 • HARD COVER • 420 PAGES A gorgeously illustrated collection of essays on the history and influence of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. by 14 contributing writers. With lavish illustrations and an extensive bibliography. (RUS252, $60.00)
The Baltic Revolution • Anatol Lieven HISTORY • 1994 • PAPER • 454 PAGES Lieven explores the culture and personality of the Baltic peoples, their religious and national differences and relations with Russia and the West. Written by a London Times correspondent who interweaves interviews, observations and history to reveal post-Glasnost Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. (BLT02, $47.00)
Belarus, At a Crossroads in History • Jan Zaprudnik HISTORY • 1993 • PAPER • 278 PAGES A history of Belarus, with a focus on the status of the nation as the Soviet Union crumbled. (RUS123, $34.00)
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)
Black Sea • Neal Ascherson CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 1996 • PAPER • 306 PAGES A vivid and entertaining exploration of the Black Sea, with its unique mingling of cultures. Ascherson skillfully interweaves nature, politics, and culture as he describes both the history of the region and the current state of affairs. (RUS46, $19.00)
Borderland, A Journey through the History of Ukraine • Anna Reid HISTORY • 2000 • PAPER • 272 PAGES A lively survey of the traditions and history of Ukraine, organized geographically. Reid, who was for three years the Kiev correspondent for the Economist, combines first-person reports, interviews and history in this insightful portrait of the region. (RUS84, $17.00)
Bradt Guide Georgia • Tim Burford GUIDEBOOK • 2011 • PAPER • 272 PAGES This convenient guide is a personal, detailed overview of Georgia. It includes coverage of the Black Sea coast, Tbilisi and other major towns, as well as information on history, culture and accommodations. Filled with photographs, maps and excellent travel information, including visiting Armenia on a three day visa. (CCS03, $25.99)
The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoevsky • Larissa Volokhonsky • Richard Pevear LITERATURE • 1991 • PAPER • 832 PAGES Dostoyevsky's final masterpiece, the introspective, philosophical novel of four very different brothers dealing with the murder of their father. This edition is an acclaimed recent translation. (RUS108, $18.00)
Burning Lights • Bella Chagall • Marc Chagall • Norbert Guterman BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 1988 • PAPER • 268 PAGES A memoir of growing up in the city of Vitebsk, Belarus in the beginning of the 20th century. Illustrated by the author's husband (famous artist Marc Chagall), this is a woman's story of life in traditional Belorussian society. (RUS122, $19.00)
Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture • Nicholas Rzhevsky CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 1998 • PAPER • 372 PAGES A collection of scholarly articles on Russian culture. (RUS295, $41.00)
The Captain's Daughter and Other Stories • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin LITERATURE • 1957 • PAPER • 320 PAGES Featuring Pushkin's novel-length masterpeice, The Captains Daughter, set against the events of the Pugachov uprising in during the reign of Catherine II. (RUS311, $12.50)
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)
Caucasus: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan • Freytag & Berndt REFERENCE • MAP A travel map of the Caucasus at a scale 1:1,000,000. Two Sides. 33x47 inches. (CCS01, $14.95)
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)
Clara's Grand Tour, Travels With a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-century Europe • Glynis Ridley HISTORY • 2006 • PAPER • 240 PAGES The entertaining history of a most unusual eighteenth-century European celebrity. Clara the Indian rhinoceros was brought to Europe in 1741 by the Dutch sea captain Douwemout Van der Meer, and toured for seventeen years, to the delight of heads of state such as Louis XV and Frederick the Great. A marvelous and unique look at the introduction of Eastern wildlife into the Western world. (FRN536, $12.00)
The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel • Isaac Babel LITERATURE • 2002 • PAPER • 511 PAGES An authoritative edition of Isaac Babel's powerful short fiction, edited by his daughter Nathalie Babel and translated by award-winner Peter Constantine. This edition includes among its treasures his early Red Cavalry Stories and The Odessa Tales, masterpieces that draw on Babel's experiences. This work follows in the wake of the extraordinary Complete Works of Isaac Babel by the same team. (RUS171, $18.95)
The Coming Anarchy, Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War • Robert D. Kaplan TRAVEL NARRATIVE • 2001 • PAPER • 224 PAGES Topical essays by the prolific Robert Kaplan. (WLD51, $15.95)
Commonwealth of Independent States Map • Freytag & Berndt MAP A double-sided map of the entire CIS, divided into Western Russia (at a scale of 1:2,000,000 and eastern Russia (1:8,000,000). The map of Western Russia is the same plate as that for Eastern Europe (Item EUR36). Two Sides. 35x49 inches. (RUS133, $14.95)
Communism, A History • Richard Pipes HISTORY • 2003 • PAPER • 192 PAGES This short, fiercely critical history of communism provides a compelling overview, from the ideas of Karl Marx to the end of the 20th century. A volume in the excellent Modern Library chronicles series. (GEN367, $15.00)
A Concise History of the Russian Revolution • Peter Dimock • Richard Pipes HISTORY • 1996 • PAPER • 431 PAGES A scholarly analysis of the Russian revolution by Harvard Scholar Richard Pipes, from the events that catalyzed the revolution, to its conclusion and aftermath. Includes glossary, chronology, and photographs of important players of the Revolution. (RUS98, $17.95)
Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer • Andrei Makine LITERATURE • 2001 • PAPER • 144 PAGES The celebrated contemporary Russian author follows two ideologically fervent boys, Arkady and Alyosha, as they come of age in post-Stalin Soviet Union. (RUS136, $21.95)
The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy • Peter Constantine • Cynthia Ozick LITERATURE • 2006 • PAPER • 192 PAGES A fresh translation of Tolstoy's 1863 semi-autobiographical novel about a young Muscovite and his military adventures in the rough-and-ready Caucasus. The book is, in part, a portrait of the Cossacks -- and an account of falling in love. (RUS241, $13.00)
The Cossacks, An Illustrated History • John Ure HISTORY • 2009 • PAPER • 288 PAGES In this lively, beautifully illustrated overview, a career diplomat (and frequent visitor to the region) explores the history of the Cossacks in Southern Russia and central Asia and their role in world affairs. With 105 color and 30 black and white illustrations. Interestingly, Ure challenges the notion that the Cossacks are no longer influential (or evident), detailing their involvement in Chechnya, Bosnia and other places. (RUS135, $24.95)
Cracks in the Iron Closet, Travels in Gay and Lesbian Russia • David Tuller TRAVEL NARRATIVE • 1997 • PAPER • 344 PAGES A soul-searching reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle out and about in 1990s Russia. Tuller mixes travelogue with history, social analysis, and lots of comentary on his circle of friends and aquaintances (including the lesbian he fell for). It's an intimate, slightly surreal portrait of an emerging gay subculture in modern Russia. (RUS149, $20.00)
The Crown Jewels, The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB's Archives • Nigel West • Oleg Tsarev HISTORY • 1999 • HARD COVER • 384 PAGES A lively account of Soviet intelligence activity in Britain from the end of World War I to the late 1950s. West is a prolific British military historian specializing in espionage. (SPY21, $55.00)
Culture Smart! Russia • Anna King GUIDEBOOK • 2007 • PAPER • 168 PAGES A concise, no-nonsense guide to local customs, etiquette and culture with a short overview of the land and people along with practical travel advice. (RUS361, $9.95)
Days of Defeat and Victory • Yegor Gaidar HISTORY • 1999 • HARD COVER • 342 PAGES Gaidar, an architect of Yeltsin reforms, offers his lively, candid views on the dramatic events of the 1990s in this eyewitness account and memoir. (RUS231, $30.00)
The Death of Achilles, A Novel • Boris Akunin • Andrew Bromfield MYSTERY • 2006 • PAPER The fourth book in the series starring Russian detective Erast Petrovich Fandorin, set in Moscow in 1882. (RUS291, $12.95)
Defiance, The Bielski Partisans • Nechama Tec HISTORY • 1994 • PAPER • 304 PAGES Led by Tuvia Bielski and his brothers, a group of Jews in 1940s Belorusssia, known as the Bieleksi Partisans, mounted an armed rescue Jewish Europeans, saving hundreds from the Holocaust. This is their story, as gathered through interviews by Holocaust surviver Nechama Tec. (RUS120, $14.95)
The Devils • Fyodor Dostoevsky • David Magarshack LITERATURE • 1954 • PAPER • 704 PAGES The third of Dostoevsky's major novels is a powerful political tract and a profound study of atheism depicting the disarray that follows the appearance of a band of modish radicals in a small provincial town. (RUS309, $14.00)
Doctor Zhivago • Boris Pasternak • Richard Pevear • Larissa Volokhonsky LITERATURE • 2011 • PAPER • 544 PAGES This epic story of life and love -- set against the backdrop of the first half of the 20th century -- takes in both World Wars and the Revolution. Banned in Russia upon publication in the 1950s, it was later made into the classic film by David Lean. (RUS222, $16.95)
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)
The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 • Norman Stone HISTORY • 2000 • PAPER • 384 PAGES A classic study of Russia's contribution to the First World War. First published in 1975, before Soviet archives were opened, this work details the Russian defeat and how it affected the 1917 revolution. (WAR76, $16.95)
Empire, The Russian Empire and Its Rivals • Dominic Lieven HISTORY • 2002 • PAPER • 528 PAGES Russia scholar Lieven examines empires thoroughout history, focusing on the tsarist and Soviet empires in Russia. He dismisses the idea of a U.S. empire and deems the U.S.S.R. to have been the last empire. (RUS296, $22.00)
The Empress & the Architect, British Architecture and Gardens at the Court of Catherine the Great • Dmitri Shvidkovsky ART & ARCHITECTURE • 1996 • HARD COVER • 273 PAGES A gorgeous oversize survey of the 18th-century palaces, towns, parks and gardens in Russia designed by Charles Cameron, the Scottish architect to the court of Catherine the Great. With 190 black-and-white and 100 color illustrations, including architectural drawings and engravings, watercolors and modern color photographs. Shvidkovsky is a leading historian of Russian architecture. Appropriate attention is devoted to Catherine's Palace at Pushkin (Tsarkoye Selo) and Pavlovsk. (RUS259, $85.00)
The End of Eurasia, Russia on the Border Between Geopolitics and Globalization • Dmitri Trenin HISTORY • 2002 • PAPER • 340 PAGES A thought provoking analysis of Russia's foreign policy by the deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center (and a retired Russian army officer). Trenin -- who argues for a Euro-centered Russia and integration with the West -- looks at Russia's western face, its southern borders with the Islamic republics of Central Asia and the far east, increasingly dominated by China. (RUS163, $24.95)
Eugene Onegin, A Novel in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin • Vladimir Nabokov LITERATURE • 2001 • PAPER • 362 PAGES In this translation of Pushkin's epic poem set in 19th-century Russia, the great novelist Nabokov brings the spark of Pushkin's original words to life. (RUS290, $24.95)
Eugene Onegin, A Novel in Verse • James E. Falen • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin LITERATURE • 1998 • PAPER • 240 PAGES A master work by one of Russia's most respected poets. Set in early 19th-century Russia, Pushkin's verse novel tells the tale of three men and three women, interwoven with a variety of literal philosophical and autobiographical tangents. (RUS101, $9.95)
Eyewitness Guide Moscow • Eyewitness Guides GUIDEBOOK • 2010 • PAPER • 263 PAGES An outstanding guide to Moscow, its culture, history and attractions, with excellent local maps, site plans and hundreds of color photographs. It includes a select, annotated listing of recommended hotels, restaurants, cafes and shops. (RUS164, $23.00)
Eyewitness Guide St. Petersburg • Eyewitness Guides GUIDEBOOK • 2010 • PAPER • 264 PAGES • BEST SELLER An outstanding guide to St. Petersburg, its culture, history and attractions. This compact travel guide features excellent local maps and site plans, hundreds of color photographs and a good selection of writing on St. Petersburg over the ages. (RUS87, $25.00)
Faberge in the Royal Collection • Caroline De Guitaut ART & ARCHITECTURE • 2003 • HARD COVER • 240 PAGES A handsome study of Faberge art and the British Royal Family. Includes essays on the history of the collection, royal collectors, and Faberge's enduring influence. With 220 illustrations, 200 in color. (RUS215, $50.00)
Fathers and Sons • Ivan Turgenev LITERATURE • 1975 • PAPER • 295 PAGES This book is the original exploration of the generation gap, where the progressive, atheistic and scientific nihilism of the radical Bazarov clashes with the traditional values of his elders. The most accessible of the great Russian novelists, Turgenev was the first to create the modern revolutionary, the outsider, and the first to structure his story around the psychology of his characters instead of plot. More accurately translated than other Turgenev classics (RUS19, $13.00)
The First Circle • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn • Thomas Whitney LITERATURE • 1997 • PAPER • 580 PAGES Set in Moscow, Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle follows the fate of Gleb Nerzhin, his scientist colleagues and fellow prisoners and how they negotiate the horrors of Soviet Russia in the years following WWII. Like his protagonist, the author was a mathematician forced to work in a Stalinist-era prison run as a research institute. Solzhenitsyn was the winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature. (RUS260, $16.95)
First Person, An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President • Vladimir Putin HISTORY • 2000 • PAPER • 208 PAGES A book-length series of interviews with Russia's leader, organized chronologically. The question and answer sessions cover the man, his politics and rise to power. Translated by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. (RUS161, $16.00)
Five Plays • Anton Chekhov • Ronald Hingley LITERATURE • 2008 • PAPER • 294 PAGES A comprehensive collection of Chekhov's major plays, including "Ivanov," "The Seagull," "Uncle Vanya," "Three Sisters," and "The Cherry Orchard." (RUS88, $8.95)
The Fixer • Bernard Malamud LITERATURE • 2004 • PAPER • 352 PAGES Set in Tsarist Russia, this well-known novel by Malamud tells the story of a young Jewish boy from Kiev wrongly accused of murder. Based on true events, the book confronts anti-semitism in Russia during the first decades of the 20th century. This classic novel (first published in 1966) was the first book ever to win both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. (RUS271, $15.00)
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)
Following Balanchine • Robert Garis BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 1997 • PAPER • 260 PAGES Part art criticism, part personal memoir, this work is an homage to an artist by a passionate fan who watched his legacy unfold. English professor and dance critic Robert Garis describes how Balanchine's ballets prompted his own self-discovery. (RUS194, $28.00)
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)
From Karamzin to Bunin: An Anthology of Russian Short Stories • Carl Proffer ANTHOLOGY • 1969 • PAPER • 468 PAGES This anthology stands out by including a broad selection of literary masterpieces from the earliest Russian prose to the years before the revolution, the best short works by each of the authors, and reliable translations of such masterpieces as Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades," Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych," Gogol's "The Overcoat," and several of Chekhov's best-loved stories. (RUS08, $24.00)
From Nyet to Da: Understanding the Russians • Yale Richmond CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 2003 • PAPER • 219 PAGES A cultural portrait of the Russians for the traveler, covering Russia's geography and culture, character, state and society. With chapters on "Personal Encounters" and "Negotiating with Russians." Richmond is a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer who spent 20 years in Russia. (RUS96, $23.95)
From Union to Commonwealth • Gail Lapidus HISTORY • 1992 • PAPER • 127 PAGES A sweeping history of the fragmentation of the Soviet Union by a team of experts, each writing from their own area of knowledge - political, historical and sociological. (RUS285, $35.00)
Galina, A Russian Story • Galina Vishnevskaya BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 1985 • PAPER • 568 PAGES Born in St. Petersburg, the great Soprano (and wife of Mstislav Rostropovich) recounts her extraordinary life in this bestseller (turned into an opera in 1996). (RUS312, $26.00)
The Gentle Axe • R. N. Morris MYSTERY • 2008 • PAPER • 320 PAGES The St. Petersburg of 1867 is brought vividly to life as investigator Porfiry Petrovich tries to unravel the dark mystery of a disturbing double murder case. Morris draws the reader through a world of squalor and corruption, skillfully capturing it with great spirit and empathy. (RUS315, $19.00)
The Georgian Feast, The Vibrant Culture and Savory Food of the Republic of Georgia • Darra Goldstein • Niko Pirosmani CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 1999 • PAPER • 229 PAGES Historian and food expert Darra Goldstein offers up a savory introduction to the Republic of Georgia in this illustrated cultural history. She combines her love of Georgian food -- and recipes -- with information on geography, history and culture. (CCS02, $24.95)
Gorbachev and Yeltsin As Leaders • George Breslauer HISTORY • 2002 • PAPER • 3831 PAGES An astute, balanced political analysis. Breslauer -- a professor at Berkeley -- has also published Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics (1982). (RUS156, $32.99)
The Gothic Enterprise, A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral • Robert A. Scott ART & ARCHITECTURE • 2005 • PAPER • 294 PAGES Scott, whose interest in the history of cathedrals began when he first saw the magnificent Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Salisbury, England, takes his reader on a historical, architectural and sociological tour of the magnificent spires and stained-glass windows that dot the landscape of Europe. It's an accessible, personable overview. (EUR190, $21.95)
The Great History of the Russian Ballet, Its Art and Choreography • Elisabeth Souritz • Evdokia Belova • E. Bocharnikova ART & ARCHITECTURE • 1999 • HARD COVER • 208 PAGES An illustrated history of the Russification of ballet. For over two centuries the Russians have revolutionized and made this imported art form their own. This work, compiled by a team of scholars, chronicles the history of the discipline under the guidance of Petipa, Tchaikovsky, Diaghilev and more. With illustrations, designs, portraits and photographs. (RUS195, $55.00)
The Great Railway Bazaar • Paul Theroux TRAVEL NARRATIVE • 2006 • PAPER • 384 PAGES Theroux's vintage 1970s journeys across Asia by train display all his talent for portraiture, ego and the dismissive aside. It's great fun. He takes every two-bit train he can find from London across Europe, Turkey and the Middle East, India, Japan and China, returning home via the Trans-Siberian Express. (ASA40, $14.95)
Growing Pains, Russian Democracy and the Election of 1993 • Jerry F. Hough • Timothy J. Colton HISTORY • 1998 • PAPER • 745 PAGES An in-depth analysis of Russia's 1993 election -- the first since the collapse of the Soviet Union -- with attention given to campaigns, parties, personalities and the electoral process. (RUS75, $26.95)
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: Vol. I • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn • Thomas Whitney LITERATURE • 2007 • PAPER • 672 PAGES A masterpiece of literature and history, this novel documents the horrors of Russia's prison system under communism. Based on Solzhenitsyn's first-hand experiences, it is a powerful and unforgettable work of suffering and redemption. This is the first volume in "The Gulag Archipelago" trilogy. (RUS113, $21.99)
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: Vol. II • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn • Thomas Whitney LITERATURE • 2007 • PAPER • 712 PAGES A masterpiece of literature and history, this novel documents the horrors of Russia's prison system under communism. Based on Solzhenitsyn's first-hand experiences, it is a powerful and unforgettable work of suffering and redemption. This is the second (and by some considered the best) in "The Gulag Archipelago" trilogy. (RUS74, $21.99)
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: Vol. III • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn • Thomas Whitney LITERATURE • 2007 • PAPER • 570 PAGES A masterpiece of literature and history, this novel documents the horrors of Russia's prison system under communism. Based on Solzhenitsyn's first-hand experiences, it is a powerful and unforgettable work of suffering and redemption. This is the third volume in "The Gulag Archipelago" trilogy. (RUS114, $21.99)
Gulag, A History • Anne Applebaum HISTORY • 2004 • PAPER • 677 PAGES A massive, fascinating and thoroughly unsettling history of Russia's infamous gulags by Anne Applebaum, noteworthy for its expansive view, effortless prose and prodigious research. Instituted in the aftermath of the Revolution and expanded during the reign of Stalin, this system of prison camps was simultaneously the Soviet Union's darkest secret and their greatest industrial asset. Millions died and millions more slaved in mines and factories. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. (SIB34, $18.95)
Hadji Murad • Leo Tolstoy • Aylmer Maude LITERATURE • 2003 • PAPER • 192 PAGES A short novel set in the 19th-century Caucasus, concerning -- in part -- conflicts between the occupying Russians and Muslim groups in the region. Tolstoy, who spent four years in the Russian army in the Caucasus, based his story on a real-life mountain warrior. Originally published posthumously in 1923, this edition includes an introduction by John Burt Foster that puts the novel in its historical context. (CCS18, $11.95)
The Heart of a Dog • Mikhail Bulgakov • Michael Glenny LITERATURE • 1999 • PAPER • 82 PAGES A comic tale -- and deadpan parable of the Russian revolution -- this novella opens with the memorable line: Ooow-ow-ooow-owow. Oh, look at me, I'm dying. Bulgakov makes great fun of boring everyday life in the Soviet Union in this high-spirited story of a dog who receives the testicles and pituitary glands of a recently decreased man. By the author of the superb "Master and Margarita." (RUS127, $14.00)
Here Is Where We Meet • John Berger LITERATURE • 2006 • PAPER • 256 PAGES This novel weaves a portrait of several European countries through encounters with the dead, from the narrator's mother, whom he discovers on a park bench in Lisbon, to a childhood friend wandering a market in Krakow. "The dead don't stay where they are buried," the protagonist's mother tells him, and this becomes the mantra for this most unusual journey through Europe's history and people. (EUR189, $15.00)
A Hero of Our Time • Mikhail Lermontov • Vladimir Nabokov • Dmitri Nabokov LITERATURE • 2009 • PAPER • 210 PAGES The story of the bored and cynical antihero Pechorin. A subtle, psychological, and brooding masterpiece of Russian Romanticism originally published in 1840, it influenced later 19th century greats including Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov. (RUS316, $14.95)
A History of Russia • Nicholas Riasanovsky HISTORY • 2000 • PAPER • 776 PAGES First published nearly 40 years ago, this comprehensive history of Russia -- now in its eighth edition -- remains a popular survey for students and travelers with a serious interest in history. It's a scholarly, balanced survey from Russia's Kievan origins through Imperial and Soviet Russia to Yeltsin and the new Russian Federation. (RUS130, $74.95)
A History of Russia • George Vernadsky HISTORY • 1986 • PAPER • 520 PAGES A popular college text. (RUS174, $32.00)
A History of Russian Music, From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar • Francis Maes • Arnold Pomerans MUSIC • 2001 • HARD COVER • 440 PAGES A scholarly social history of Russian music and the influence of notable Russian composers starting in the early 19th century with Mikhail Glinka and covering up through the 1970s with the works of Shostakovich. (RUS223, $60.00)
A History of the Peoples of Siberia, Russia's North Asian Colony 1581-1990 • James Forsyth HISTORY • 1992 • PAPER • 455 PAGES An ethnohistory of the people of Siberia from Russian conquest to the 1980s. Forsyth looks at 30 indigenous groups, comparing their experience with the Eskimos and Indians of North America. Along with the Yakuts, Tatars and Chukchis, this comprehensive study also features the peoples of Lake Baikal, Manchuria and the Russian-Chinese border. With 16 halftones and 12 maps. (SIB03, $55.00)
Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia • Dan Healey CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 2001 • HARD COVER • 376 PAGES This study unearths the legal, medical and political attitudes toward gay men and women before and after 1917. Healey, a lecturer in Russian social history in Wales, reveals the changing homosexual subculture in Moscow and St. Petersburg in this fascinating, scholarly book. (RUS145, $52.50)
Hope Against Hope • Nadezhda Mandelstam BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 1999 • PAPER • 480 PAGES Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoir of life with her husband Osip and a riveting account of Stalinist Russia. One of Russia's greatest 20th-centuiry poets, Osip Mandelstam died in Stalin's Great Purge of 1937-38. (RUS308, $31.99)
House of the Dead • Fyodor Dostoevsky • David McDuff LITERATURE • 1986 • PAPER • 362 PAGES Dostoyevsky's semi-autobiographical novel of a man forced to endure ten years in a Siberian prison for the murder of his wife. Accused as a political subversive, Dostoyevsky himself spent four years in a prison camp. (RUS261, $12.00)
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)
I, Maya Plisetskayar • Maya Plisetskaya • Antonia W. Bouis BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 2001 • HARD COVER • 448 PAGES A memoir of dance set against a backdrop of political turmoil. Plisetskaya, a prominent Russian ballerina, bitterly describes the persecution of her family and her struggles as an artist under the Soviet Regime. (RUS254, $50.00)
The Icon and the Axe, An Interpretive History of Russian Culture • James H. Billington HISTORY • 1970 • PAPER • 786 PAGES From Kievan beginnings through 600 years to the Soviet era, this book presents the intellectual currents that have shaped Russia and her traditions. It's a cultural and artistic history, written by the Librarian of Congress: a comprehensive, intellectual investigation of the spiritual and ideological forces that led to the development of Russia. (RUS09, $24.00)
Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography • Igor Stravinsky BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 1998 • PAPER • 176 PAGES A brief account of the life and work of Stravinsky (1882-1971), by the conductor himself, covering the first 50 years of his life in St. Petersburg, France and Switzerland. Originally published in 1956. (MUS18, $17.95)
Images of Space, St. Petersburg in the Visual and Verbal Arts • Grigory Kaganov • Sidney Monas ART & ARCHITECTURE • 1997 • HARD COVER • 238 PAGES A slim, academic study, featuring 75 black-and-white engravings, paintings and illustrations. This is not an architectural guide to St. Petersburg in the traditional sense. Instead of studying the buildings, parks, and bridges of the historic city, Kaganov delves into changing ideas about spatial representation, looking at the way St. Petersburg's urban spaces -- and the depiction of them in art and literature-- have changed over the centuries. (RUS42, $59.95)
Inside Putin's Russia, Can there be Reform Without Democracy? • Andrew Jack HISTORY • 2005 • PAPER An illuminating, highly readable survey of developments in Russia since 1998 by the Moscow bureau chief of the Financial Times. (RUS283, $19.99)
Ivan The Terrible, First Tsar of Russia • Isabel De Madariaga HISTORY • 2005 • HARD COVER • 384 PAGES An important biography of the much-misunderstood 16th-century Russian czar and his times, including a consideration of the role of religion, magic and astrology at the royal court. (RUS278, $35.00)
Ivan Vasilievich, Back to the Future • Leonid Gaiday CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 1973 • DVD In this madcap comedy, based on a play by Mikhail Bulgakov, finds Vasilievich transported from Soviet-era Moscow to the palace of Ivan the Terrible. (RUS246, $29.99)
K-19 The Widowmaker: The Secret Story of the Soviet Nuclear Submarine • Peter A. Huchthausen HISTORY • 2002 • PAPER • 243 PAGES This companion to the film of the same name describes the race against time to prevent the meltdown of a nuclear reactor aboard the first Soviet ballistic missile boat in 1961. Former U.S. Navy antisubmarine expert Peter Huchthausen tells this stunning true story of captain Nikolai Zateyev and crew's life saving heroics. Includes rare archival photographs, movie stills and an afterward by director Kathryn Bigelow. (RUS187, $16.00)
Khrushchev, The Man and His Era • William Taubman BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 2004 • PAPER • 908 PAGES A definitive, Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the life of Nikita Khrushchev, which also serves a detailed portrait of Soviet Russia and the legacy of Stalin. Taubman is professor of political science at Amherst (RUS257, $17.95)
Kiev: A Portrait, 1800-1917 • Michael F. Hamm HISTORY • 1996 • PAPER • 304 PAGES From medieval center to important city in Imperial Russia, this scholarly book is a wonderfully informative cultural history of the city and especially its 19th-century legacy. (RUS56, $45.00)
Knopf Mapguide Moscow • Knopf Guides GUIDEBOOK • 2005 • PAPER • 48 PAGES Full-color foldout maps make this guidebook a handy and practical way to find information on where to go and what to do in the city. (RUS270, $10.95)
Kosmos, A Portrait of the Russian Space Age • Svetlana Boym • Adam Bartos CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 2001 • HARD COVER • 176 PAGES A portfolio of 100 photographs of the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, with an accompanying essay by Harvard professor Svetlana Boym. The somber photographs were taken between 1995 and 1997 in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. (RUS184, $40.00)
Kremlin Rising, Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution • Peter Baker • Susan Glasser HISTORY • 2005 • HARD COVER • 453 PAGES A critical overview of recent political change in Russia by two Washington Post journalists. (RUS273, $27.50)
Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance • Lynn Garafola CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 2005 • PAPER • 468 PAGES A marvelously illustrated and scholarly collection of essays on the evolution of dance in the 20th century. The four sections of the book focus on the Ballet Ruses, female dancers, New York as the dance capital of the world and questions of memory and reconstruction. (RUS256, $32.95)
Lenin, A New Biography • Dmitri Volkogonov BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 1994 • HARD COVER • 529 PAGES A well regarded biography. (RUS250, $69.00)
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)
Life and Fate • Vasily Grossman LITERATURE • 2006 • PAPER • 896 PAGES Modeled on Tolstoy's War and Peace, this novel gives a sweeping account of Soviet life during World War II. (RUS299, $24.95)
Literary Russia, A Guide • Anna Benn • Rosamund Bartlett LITERATURE • 2006 • HARD COVER • 528 PAGES Back in print! Organized geographically, this guide and literary companion includes the homes, museums and literary landmarks of Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Nabokov and other Russian masters. (RUS45, $37.50)
Lonely Planet Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania • Lonely Planet GUIDEBOOK • 2009 • PAPER • 456 PAGES In its hallmark style, this practical guide to the Baltic nations by Lonely Planet features maps, a good overview of culture, history and language, and much nuts-and-bolts information on excursions, accommodations and sightseeing. With color photographs and excellent travel information. (BLT05, $25.99)
Lonely Planet Russia • Richard Nebesky GUIDEBOOK • 2012 • PAPER • 788 PAGES A practical guide to Russia, featuring a good overview of culture and history and, more significantly, detailed travel information on where to go and what to do. (RUS82, $29.99)
Lonely Planet Russian Phrasebook • James Jenkin • Inna Zaitseva LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS • 2009 • PAPER • 256 PAGES A handy shirtpocket phrasebook for Russian basics focusing on pronunciation, basic grammar and essential vocabulary for the traveler. (RUS111, $8.99)
Lost Opportunity: What has Made Economic Reform in Russia so Difficult? • Marshall Goldman HISTORY • 1996 • PAPER • 308 PAGES An astute commentator, the author looks at Yeltsin's economic reforms and the changes wrought on the complex Russian economy since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Associate Director of the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard, the author is none too optimistic about the prospects for genuine reform. (RUS64, $21.95)
Making Sense of War, the Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution • Amir Weiner HISTORY • 2002 • PAPER • 432 PAGES A consideration of WWII and its impact on Russia. (RUS251, $38.95)
Mammals of Europe • Priscilla Barrett • David W. MacDonald FIELD GUIDE • 2002 • PAPER • 320 PAGES Published by Princeton, this is a field guide to land and marine mammals throughout Europe, both endemic and introduced. With more than 600 color illustrations of over 200 mammals, it's a comprehensive handbook, with detailed descriptions, range maps and commentary on behavior. (FG61, $38.50)
The Master and Margarita • Larissa Volokhonsky • Richa Pevear • Mikhail Bulgakov LITERATURE • 2001 • PAPER • 402 PAGES Hailed as "one of the greatest novels to ever come out of the Soviet Union" by the "New York Times," this book is impossible to categorize. It is part satire, part fairytale, part fable, part slapstick. It was written in the 1930s, the most repressive period of Stalin's reign, as an elaborate allegory to convey Michail Bulgakov's anti-Stalinist message, complete with a main character named Satan who is accompanied by his talking black cat. (RUS44, $14.00)
The Master of Petersburg • J.M. Coetzee LITERATURE • 1995 • PAPER • 250 PAGES Celebrated author Fyodor Dostoyevski becomes a literary character in Coetzee's novel of 19th-century Russia. Dostoyevski is summoned to St. Petersburg to investigate the suicide of his stepson. The mystery he soon becomes ensnared in illuminates the underworld of pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg. (RUS200, $16.00)
The Memoirs of Catherine the Great • Catherine the Great • Mark Cruse • Hilde Hoogenboom BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 2005 • HARD COVER • 352 PAGES Catherine The Great's rule lasted from 1762 until her death in 1796; this collection of her memoirs begins some years before, upon her arrival in Russia as a German princess in 1744. An intimate insight into the life of the world-renowned ruler and her often uneasy adjustment to the world of Russian royalty. (RUS277, $26.95)
Minsk Map • Freytag & Berndt 2006 • MAP A city plan of Minsk, the capital of Belarus and its largest city, at a scale of 1:16,000. Two Sides. 37 X 48 inches. (RUS317, $11.95)
The Moldovans: Romania, Russia and the Politics of Culture • Charles King HISTORY • 2000 • PAPER • 294 PAGES A scholarly political and cultural history of Moldova, focusing on issues of national identity in a post-Soviet world. (EUR97, $24.95)
Moscow Diary • Walter Benjamin TRAVEL NARRATIVE • 1986 • PAPER • 150 PAGES From the pen of Walter Benjamin, a major figure in German literature and criticism, comes this revealing diary of his observations of Russian life during December 1926 and January 1927. Not only does he record thoughts on Moscow's cultural crisis and daily life, but he also affords readers a glimpse into his own emotionally unstable life and his relatiosnhips with a reluctant mistress and playwright Bernhard Reich. (RUS41, $27.00)
Moscow, A Cultural History • Caroline Brooke HISTORY • 2007 • PAPER • 256 PAGES Caroline Brooke explores the birth and various reinventions of Moscow, from a twelfth-century fortress to invasion by Napoleon in 1812 to the rise and fall of communism. Part of the Cityscapes series. (RUS292, $24.99)
Moscow, Governing the Socialist Metropolis • Timothy J. Colton HISTORY • 1998 • PAPER • 939 PAGES A scholarly, political history of Moscow from frontier town through Tsarist and Soviet transformations to the 1990s by a Harvard professor. It's a big book, nicely written, that will appeal to travelers with a serious interest in history. At almost 1,000 pages with the usual scholarly notes it's not for the feint of heart. (RUS157, $31.50)
Murder on the Leviathan • Boris Akunin • Andrew Bromfield MYSTERY • 2005 • PAPER • 240 PAGES Erast Fandorin, a young diplomat who moonlights as a detective and the hero of Akunin's novel "The Winter Queen" must match wits with the French police commissioner Gustave Gauche to determine which passenger aboard a ship destined for India murdered the Lord Littleby and his ten servants. Akunin pays homage to Agatha Christie with a bizarre and memorable cast of characters in this entertaining page-turner. (RUS225, $14.00)
National Geographic St. Petersburg • Jeremy Howard GUIDEBOOK • 2007 • PAPER • 272 PAGES A practical guide with maps, hundreds of photographs, cultural sidebars, background information and more. (RUS318, $22.95)
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)
Nights at the Circus • Angela Carter LITERATURE • 1984 • PAPER • 294 PAGES This wildly inventive, bawdy -- and very strange -- tale follows an enchanted circus and its six-foot-two winged star from turn-of-the-century London to St. Petersburg and Siberia. Ever since reading this novel, we've wanted to take the Trans-Siberian Express. (RUS189, $16.00)
No Fixed Points, Dance in the Twentieth Century • Malcolm McCormick • Nancy Reynolds CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 2003 • HARD COVER • 928 PAGES A comprehensive history of 20th century dance in Europe and America. It's a readable, illustrated reference that offers both biographies of major dancers and choreographers, and critical analysis. (RUS255, $60.00)
Northern Europe Scandinavia Map • Freytag & Berndt 2007 • MAP A colorful shaded relief map of Scandinavia and the Baltic States at a scale of 1:2,000,000. It shows the entire Baltic Sea region, also covered by the Baltic Sea States map (BLT38) in the same series. One Side. 42x34 inches. (EUR19, $14.95)
Notes from Underground • Fyodor Dostoevsky • Richard Pevear LITERATURE • 1994 • PAPER • 160 PAGES "I am a sick man... I am a wicked man." So begins Dostoevsky's darkly funny 1864 novel, an introspective psychological portrait of the Underground Man, one of Dostoevsky's most recognizable protagonists. A rich character study and an excellent glimpse of 19th-century St. Petersburg, "the most abstract and intentional city on the entire globe," written with the unforgettable wit and compassion of the master of Russian literature. (RUS230, $12.00)
Notes of a Provincial Wildfowler • Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov NATURAL HISTORY • 1998 • HARD COVER • 216 PAGES A celebrated drama critic and man of letters in 19th-century Moscow, Aksakov was also a keen observer of nature, and especially of birds. Organized by species, this book collects his notes on the natural history of Russian birdlife, including detailed observations on behavior, ecology and landscapes. A wonderfully literate book, this is the companion volume to Notes on Fishing. (RUS60, $39.00)
Oblomov • Ivan Goncharov • David Magarshack LITERATURE • 2005 • PAPER • 496 PAGES The masterful portrait of upper-class decline that made Goncharov famous. (RUS310, $16.00)
Odessa Memories • Patricia Herlihy • Nicolas Iljine CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 2004 • HARD COVER • 194 PAGES • COMING IN An album and portrait of pre-1917 Odessa, this lovely book shows the thriving city on the Black Sea at its height, a cosmopolitan city and window on the West that rivaled St. Petersburg. Historian Patricia Herlihy provides an essay on the cultural life of the city and, in particular, the Jewish life of Old Odessa. With 219 illustrations, 169 in color. Other contributors include Bel Kaufman, Sholem Aleichem's granddaughter; Odessa historians Oleg Gubar and Alexander Rozenboim; and translator Antonina Bouis. (RUS262, $40.00)
The Oligarchs, Wealth & Power in the New Russia • David Hoffman HISTORY • 2004 • PAPER • 567 PAGES A scrupulously documented, fascinating account of six businessmen whose profiteering amid the near-anarchy and corruption that followed collapse of the Soviet Union skyrocketed them to positions of immense power in the New Russia. Written by the acclaimed former Moscow bureau chief for the Washington Post, it's an engrossing tale of capitalism born from chaos. (RUS159, $21.95)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn LITERATURE • 2009 • PAPER • 181 PAGES The poignant story of an inmate in one of Stalin's Siberian labor camps struggling to maintain his dignity under the oppression of a Communist prison. This is the unexpurgated translation, authorized by Solzhenitsyn after a relaxation of censorship. (RUS26, $14.00)
Operation Solo, The FBI's Man in the Kremlin • John Barron HISTORY • 1997 • PAPER • 368 PAGES Drawn from interviews with his wife and other FBI operatives, this is the story of Morris Childs, second in command in the U.S. Communist Party, trusted advisor to Krushchev and Brezhnev, and covert American spy. (SPY15, $14.95)
The Orthodox Church • Kallistos Ware RELIGION • 1993 • PAPER • 359 PAGES A comprehensive, clear overview of the origins, historical development and practice of Eastern Christianity by a British scholar and Archbishop. With chapters on Byzantium, conversion of the Slavs, the Church under Islam, Moscow and St. Petersburg and the contemporary Orthodox world. (GEN261, $17.00)
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)
A People's Tragedy, A History of the Russian Revolution • Orlando Figes HISTORY • 1998 • PAPER • 960 PAGES An engrossing epic narrative of the Russian Revolution through Lenin's death in 1924. While presenting the full scope of the revolution, Figes does not lose sight of the individual personalities, not only the leaders but also the workers, peasants and soldiers. Figes argues that the revolution was a disaster for the ordinary people of Russia. (RUS181, $27.00)
Peter the Great • Paul Bushkovitch BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 2003 • PAPER • 224 PAGES Focusing on Peter's cooperative relationship with the aristocracy, Yale professor Paul Bushkovitch offers a revised view of the legendary modernizer of Russia. Bushkovitch sees Peter as more of a politician than once thought, while no less a dynamic and powerful personality. (RUS169, $24.95)
Peter the Great, His Life and World • Robert Massie BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 1986 • PAPER • 960 PAGES A Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling history of the great Westernizer of Russia. Massie portrays a giant of history on the monumental canvas of Europe as he transforms Russia from backwater tsardom to major empire. In this massive chronicle, he tells of Peter the Great as he travels incognito to the West, builds Russia's navy, defeats Sweden, moves the capital of the country to the newly created St. Petersburg, and modernizes Russia. (RUS11, $8.99)
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)
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)
Pimsleur Quick & Simple Russian • Pimsleur Language Method LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS • 2005 • AUDIO CD Four audio CDs with eight 30-minute lessons in basic Russian, covering elementary vocabulary and phrases used in travel and everyday situations. The Pimsleur method emphasizes the use of listening skills without reading materials (so there isn't a book to follow along). It's advertised as "Totally audio: hear it, learn it, speak it." (RUS112, $19.95)
Piratization of Russia, Russian Reform Goes Awry • Marshall Goldman HISTORY • 2003 • PAPER • 288 PAGES The distressing tale of the making of oligarchs in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Goldman is the Associate Director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University and the Davis Professor of Russian Economics Emeritus at Wellesley College, and has written widely on contemporary Russian affairs. (RUS211, $49.95)
Plays and Petersburg Tales • Nikolai Gogol • Christopher English LITERATURE • 1999 • PAPER • 400 PAGES Two plays (Marriage and The Government Inspector) and six short stories written by the Russian master, all set in St. Petersburg. (RUS300, $10.95)
Pocket Menu Reader Russia • Langenscheidt • Mario Caramitti LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS • 2000 • PAPER • 189 PAGES A pocket guide to negotiating food and restaurants in Russian with an overview of typical foods, 1,500 words and phrases, transliterations and Cyrillic. (RUS165, $7.95)
The Pocket Oxford Russian Dictionary • Colin Howlett LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS • 2006 • PAPER • 638 PAGES A succinct English-Russian, Russian-English dictionary with a focus on useful idioms and featuring 70,000 words and phrases. Revised second edition. (RUS272, $22.95)
Prodigal Son, Dancing for Balanchine in a World of Pain and Magic • Edward Villella • Larry Kaplan BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 1998 • PAPER • 317 PAGES The memoir of the great star of American ballet who found fame in the age of Balanchine. It captures his Rocky-like ascent from a 9-year-old boy taking ballet classes in Queens to the glory of the stage of the NYCB. Along the way it offers a glimpse into the dynamic legacy of Balanchine, who Villella alternately criticizes and praises. (USE283, $21.95)
Putin's Russia • Lilia Shevtsova HISTORY • 2005 • PAPER • 306 PAGES An analysis of the character of Putin's leadership by a top political analyst and award-winning Russian journalist. Shevtsova has also written Yelsin's Russia. (RUS268, $19.95)
The Queen of Spades • Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky MUSIC • 1999 • PAPER • 800 PAGES The full score of one of Tchaikovsky's most popular operas, his adaptation of Pushkin's short story of the same name. (RUS219, $39.95)
Queer in Russia: A Story of Sex, Self, and the Other • Laurie Essig CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 1999 • PAPER • 254 PAGES An engaging, scholarly portrait of post-perestroika gay culture. The author (who appears in male drag in one of many photographs in the book), interviews many men and women for this insightful study, which also takes into account her own observations, and a close look at contemporary books, plays, and music. Despite Yeltsin's de-crimilization of consensual sex between adults of the same sex in 1993, atitudes and behavios have been slow to change. (RUS146, $23.95)
Queer Sites, Gay Urban Histories Since 1600 • David Higgs HISTORY • 1999 • PAPER • 240 PAGES A history of the gay subculture in seven major cities from the early modern period to the present. The book focuses on the changing nature of queer experience in London, Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Paris, Lisbon and Moscow. The contributors look, in particular, at the transition from the sexual furtiveness of centuries when male homosexual behaviour was criminal, to the open affirmation of gay identities in the 1990s. (WLD32, $39.95)
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)
Rasputin, The Saint Who Sinned • Brian Moynahan BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 2000 • PAPER • 400 PAGES A juicy biography of the curious mystic, holy man and influential advisor of the Romanovs. The lurid detail and sensational style make for a fun read. Moynahan's scholarly bent and attention to historical events also make this book a good portrait of pre-Revolutionary Russia. Not surprisingly, the author pays particular attention to Rasputin's relationship with the Tsar and Tsarina. Moynahan is the author of three previous books on Russian history. (RUS198, $17.95)
Reading Chekhov, A Critical Journey • Janet Malcolm LITERATURE • 2002 • PAPER • 205 PAGES An extended essay of Chekhov and his work interweaving literary criticism, biography and a journey to St. Petersburg, Moscow and Yalta -- all significant to the plays, stories and life of Chekhov. (RUS155, $13.95)
Reagan and Gorbachev, How The Cold War Ended • Jack Matlock HISTORY • 2005 • PAPER An eyewitness account of the relationship between the U.S. and Russia in the 1980s by Reagan's adviser on Soviet affairs and ambassador to the Soviet Union. (RUS282, $16.95)
The Red Stuff, The True Story of the Russian Race for Space • Leo De Boer SCIENCE • 1999 • DVD • 1 PAGES The dramatic tale of the early cosmonauts and the Russian Space Program, which in the years between 1957 and 1965 launched the first satellite, sent the living being (a dog) and the first man into space and made the first space walk. DE Boer, a Dutch documentary film maker, intercuts archival material, contemporary shots of Space City and interviews with some of the original cosmonauts. With English subtitles. The DVD includes Starman, the story of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. (RUS265, $19.98)
Reeling in Russia, An Angler's Paradise • Fen Montaigne TRAVEL NARRATIVE • 1998 • PAPER • 275 PAGES Fishing across Russia, Montaigne gets to out-of-the-way places (including Baikal, Kamchatka and Kolyma) and meets up with some very memorable characters. This is a wonderfully written, entertaining and insightful portrait of modern Russia. (RUS61, $18.95)
The Reforms of Peter the Great, Progress through Coercion in Russia • Evgenii Anisimov • John Alexander HISTORY • 1993 • PAPER • 344 PAGES Russian historian Evgenii Anisimov writes of Peter the Great, and how his various reforms shaped early 18th-century Russia. (RUS102, $34.95)
Resurrection, The Struggle for a New Russia • David Remnick HISTORY • 1998 • PAPER • 352 PAGES Remnick, the Washington Post reporter who won the Pulitzer Prize for Lenin's Tomb (on the fall of the Soviet Union), insightfully explores the powers shaping a new Russia. Remnick focuses on the emergence of a new power elite, but does not neglect the effect of these changes on the welfare of the Russian people. Chronologically, the book follows the ruins of the USSR, up to the 1996 elections. (RUS23, $16.00)
The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire • John Dunlop HISTORY • 1995 • PAPER • 394 PAGES A modern scholarly history of Russia from Perestroika to the abortive coup of August 1991 and dissolution of the Soviet Union. Dunlop, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, explores Yeltsin's role in resisting Communist resurgence and questions whether new institutions will survive the challenges of democracy in a traditionally undemocratic society. (RUS68, $46.95)
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)
Romanovs: Autocrats of all the Russians • Lincoln Bruce HISTORY • 1983 • PAPER • 852 PAGES A history of the rise and fall of the Romanov dynasty in Russia, from their ascension to the throne in 1613 to the Russian Revolution. (RUS25, $25.00)
Rough Guide Moscow • Rough Guide GUIDEBOOK • 2009 • PAPER • 524 PAGES A comprehensive, no-nonsense guide to the culture, history and attractions of Moscow. With fll colcor maps of Central Moscow and the Metro system, dozens of sketch maps and site diagrams, and a chapter on excursions outside of Moscow. (RUS129, $18.99)
Rough Guide Music Russia • Various Artists MUSIC • 2002 • AUDIO CD A carefully chosen sampling of the diverse sounds of Russia, including Cossack folk, Gypsy songs, and balalaikas performed by the Terem Quartet. (RUS314, $14.95)
The Routledge Atlas of Russian History • Martin Gilbert HISTORY • 2007 • PAPER • 216 PAGES A fantastically interesting, useful survey of the history of Russia in 161 maps, covering rebellion and exile, famine, expansion, trade, the military, the collapse of communism and myriad other topics, all succinctly presented. This revised edition follows the fate of Russia since the demise of the Soviet Union. Each black-and-white map is densely printed with factual information and accompanies by a detailed key and a few paragraphs of text. (RUS176, $29.95)
Running with Reindeer, Encounters in Russian Lapland • Roger Took CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 2005 • PAPER • 384 PAGES An absorbing account of travels among the reindeer herding Saami in 1990s Russia. Took, an art historian and museum curator, captures the wide landscapes, people and political instability of the wilderness surrounding Murmansk. (RUS221, $17.95)
Russia and the Russians, A History • Geoffrey Hosking HISTORY • 2011 • PAPER • 752 PAGES This ambitious history, the latest by a leading British University scholar, tackles with clarity the scope and breadth of the Russian empire from its Kievan beginnings through Imperial expansion, revolution and the Soviet period all the way to the 21st century. Hosking takes as his focus the Russian character, paying special attention to non-Russian ethnic groups scattered across Eurasia. (RUS208, $25.95)
The Russia Hand, a Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy • Strobe Talbott HISTORY • 2003 • PAPER • 478 PAGES An insider's view of the Clinton administration's role in Russia's transition from communism to democracy. Strobe Talbott was President Clinton's top advisor on Russia policy, and he gives intimate details on not only diplomatic issues, but also the characters involved, not least Boris Yeltsin and Clinton himself. (RUS234, $16.95)
The Russia House • John Le Carre LITERATURE • 2000 • PAPER • 434 PAGES The spymaster sets his sights on post-glasnost Russia in this suspenseful novel of love and espionage delivered with traditional Le Carrean panache. The backdrop of Gorbachev's restructuring paints a portrait of life in Moscow for Easterners and Westerners alike in the final decade of the Soviet Union. (RUS186, $16.00)
Russia in Search of Itself • James H. Billington HISTORY • 2004 • HARD COVER • 256 PAGES A wise and probing analysis of modern Russia by the Librarian of Congress and expert on Russia James Billington. Copublished by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. (RUS229, $26.95)
Russia in Space, The Failed Frontier? • Brian Harvey HISTORY • 2001 • PAPER • 416 PAGES In this wide-ranging guide to the Russian space program, Harvey takes readers from the program's conception in 1921, through its golden age, near ruin with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and tentative steps into the 21st century. He considers especially Russia's leading role in the International Space Station. (RUS182, $49.95)
Russia in the Age of Peter the Great • Lindsey Hughes BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 2000 • PAPER • 640 PAGES A biography of Peter the Great and an account of Russia in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Comprehensive, readable and impeccably researched, the strength of this book is in how it illuminates both Peter's life and his time. (RUS103, $90.00)
Russia Map • International Travel Maps 2011 • MAP This double-sided map at a scale of 1:6,000,000 shows Russia and the former republics of the Soviet Union as far as the Yenisey river on one side with the remainder of Eastern Russia on the reverse. With relief shading, roads and railways. Place names are Romanized (no Cyrillic). Two Sides. 38x31 inches. (RUS264, $12.95)
Russia! Nine Hundred Years of Masterpieces and Master Collections • James H. Billington ART & ARCHITECTURE • 2005 • HARD COVER • 450 PAGES The companion book to an audacious exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum, featuring 300 color reproductions, this big book brings together masterworks from early Russian icons to the present. With dozens of contributors. Divided chronologically into six major periods: Medieval Russia (12th to 17th centuries), the epoch of Peter and Catherine, 19th century, early 20th century, the 1930s-1960s, and the 1970s to present. (RUS279, $75.00)
Russia's Heritage Cities • International Travel Maps 2002 • MAP A nicely detailed map for travelers of the cities of the Golden Ring at a scale of 1:500,000. The double-side maps shows the historic region northeast of Moscow on one side, with city plans of Sergiev Posad, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Uglich, Vladimir, Suzdal, Kostroma and Pereslavl-Zalessky on the reverse. Two Sides. 23x35 inches. (RUS217, $8.95)
Russia's Unfinished Revolution, Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin • Michael McFaul HISTORY • 2001 • PAPER • 383 PAGES A political history and analysis of Russian democracy and institutions since the Gorbechev era, especially strong on Yeltsin. The author, a senior associate at Carnegie, teaches political science at Stanford. (RUS160, $23.95)
Russia, A History • Gregory Freeze HISTORY • 2002 • PAPER • 496 PAGES An illustrated survey of the full scope of Russian political history with 13 engaging essays by leading specialists; the modern era is given equal weight alongside the medieval and imperial periods. With 16 color plates and 180 illustrations. Second Edition. Gregory Freeze is a professor of history at Brandeis and research associate of the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University. (RUS40, $29.95)
Russia, Experiment With a People • Robert Service HISTORY • 2006 • PAPER • 406 PAGES An authoritative survey of the transformation of Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, organized thematically. Service casts a wide net, looking at not just political and economic change but also the influence of society, culture and belief. (RUS284, $23.50)
Russia, People and Empire, 1552-1917 • Geoffrey Hosking HISTORY • 1998 • PAPER • 548 PAGES Historian Geoffrey Hosking writes elegently and vehemently on the history of Russia under the czars. Hosking argues that Imperial Russia pursued empire building at the expense of national identity. (RUS29, $26.50)
Russia, Ukraine Belarus Map • Marco Polo 2009 • MAP A regional map of Russia, this double-sided map shows western Russia from the Moscow and St. Petersburg to Belarus, the Ukraine and the southern shores of the Black Sea at a scale of 1:2 million. The reverse shows Russia from Armenia and Georgia across Central Asia to Lake Baikal at a scale of 1:10 million. With inset plans of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Irkutsk and Baikal, along with a terrific birdd's eye map showing Arctic Russia from Scandinavia and Murmansk across to the Kurils on the revserse. One Side. 38x57 inches. (RUS313, $15.95)
The Russian Empire, A Multiethnic History • Andreas Kappeler Kappeler HISTORY • 2001 • PAPER • 455 PAGES This topical history of Russia as a multi-ethnic empire explores nationalism from the sixteenth century to today. (RUS298, $62.20)
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)
Russian Folk Art • Alison Hilton ART & ARCHITECTURE • 1995 • HARD COVER • 356 PAGES An illustrated study of Russian folk art from traditional forms to modern interpretations. (RUS104, $27.95)
The Russian Heritage Cookbook • Lynn Visson FOOD • 2009 • PAPER • 336 PAGES A guide to Russian cooking for the modern kitchen, covering everything from delicacies to down-home favorites, and every inch authentic. Visson is well-informed about the history and culture surrounding these 360 recipes, and the book is divided into helpful chapters such as "Zakuski" and "Pirogs and Pancakes." A revised edition of Visson's The Complete Russian Cookbook, Visson introduces each section with anecdotes, history and practical tips. (RUS233, $28.95)
A Russian Journal • John Steinbeck • Robert Capa TRAVEL NARRATIVE • 1999 • PAPER • 240 PAGES During the Cold War, amidst an abundance of paranoia, Steinbeck and Capa decided to gather un-propagandized information on the Russian way of life by traveling to the other side of the Iron Curtain. This is the result of their reporting project, an honest account of the people and everyday life, with striking photographs by the great Robert Capa. (RUS275, $15.00)
Russian Journal • Andrea Lee TRAVEL NARRATIVE • 2006 • PAPER • 256 PAGES An unforgettable, straight-forward account of day-to-day life in Soviet Leningrad and Moscow, originally published in 1981, interweaving the young Lee's observations and interviews. Lee accompanied her husband, a Harvard doctoral candidate in Russian history, on a 10-month stint in Russia. (RUS307, $14.95)
The Russian Museum, A Centennial Celebration of a National Treasure • Vladimir Gusyev • Yevgenia Petrova ART & ARCHITECTURE • 1998 • HARD COVER • 286 PAGES An overview of Russian art from 989 to present, highlighting the collection of The Russian Museum. Includes many unfamiliar works largely unknown outside of Russia. An informative text accompanies 295 color plates. (RUS199, $60.00)
Russian Phrasebook & Dictionary • Hippocrene LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS • 1994 • PAPER • 228 PAGES A handy phrasebook and basic dictionary featuring transliterations of all the Russian words. (RUS65, $11.95)
The Russian Revolution • Sheila Fitzpatrick HISTORY • 1994 • PAPER • 199 PAGES A concise provocative summary of events in Russia between 1917 and 1939, appropriate for the curious general reader and student alike. Fitzpatrick makes an admirable effort to rescue from politics the greatest upheaval of modern times and reclaim it for history. (RUS39, $14.95)
Russian, A Language Map • Kristine K. Kershul LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS • 2001 • PLASTIC CARD This durable, foldout card, featuring 1,000 words and phrases, works as a quick reference for travelers. (RUS276, $7.95)
Russian, Start Speaking Today! • Language/30 LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS • 1995 • AUDIO CD A 90-minute crash course with a CD and phrasebook, all packaged in a vinyl sleeve. Geared for travelers, the course follows the foreign service method -- which focuses on dialogues and useful sentences instead of individual words. In each case, an English phrase is spoken once, and repeated twice in Russian. Topics include introductions, transportation, business and health. Na zdorovye! (RUS192, $24.95)
Russka • Edward Rutherfurd LITERATURE • 2005 • PAPER • 946 PAGES In this absorbing, complex novel Rutherfurd transforms Russian history into an epic saga. The bestseller follows the fate of interconnected families over 800 years. Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, Tolstoy, Voltaire, Pushkin, Lenin, Stalin, and Rasputin all make an appearance. (RUS175, $19.00)
The Sexual Revolution in Russia, From the Age of the Czars to Today • Igor Kon HISTORY • 1995 • HARD COVER • 337 PAGES A groundbreaking, fascinating history of sex, sexuality and attitudes in Russia from Tsarist times through the communist period -- and the accompanying repression of the sexual lives of the Russians -- to the post-perestroika transformation. The author, a historian in Russia and its first "sexologist," draws on history, folklore, literature and sociological data derived from the author's surveys and interviews. (RUS147, $25.50)
The Shaman's Coat, A Native History of Siberia • Anna Reid HISTORY • 2003 • PAPER • 224 PAGES Reid, a talented journalist and intrepid traveler, interviewed hunters, reindeer herders, storytellers and dozens of other original inhabitants across Siberia for this eye-opening book. With chapters on the Khant, Buryat, Tuvans, Sakha, Ainu and Chukchi people. (SIB28, $13.00)
Siberia on Fire: Stories and Essays • Valentin Rasputin CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 1990 • PAPER • 252 PAGES Six stories and six essays on Siberia's land, spirit, and people by Rasputin, an acknowledged modern Soviet master. A resident of Irkutsk, Rasputin combines great insight with supple prose and passion for his homeland in both his fiction and non-fiction. Translated and introduced by Gerald Mikkelson and Margaret Mitchell, the collection includes essays of Baikal and Irkutsk. (SIB04, $20.00)
Siberia, Siberia • Valentin Rasputin EXPLORATION • 1997 • PAPER • 443 PAGES • HARD TO FIND ELSEWHERE A sweeping account of the exploration, conquest and colonization of Russia's "West," beginning with the crossing of the Ural Mountains by the Cossacks in 1580. Six areas of Siberia are examined, including Lake Baikal and Irkutsk. Invaluable for its perspective of the history, ecology and traditions of Siberia, this lyrical book was written by one of Russia's great post-Stalin writers, second in importance only to Solzhenitsyn. Admirably translated into English for the first time, the book is a tribute to Siberia -- and a call for its salvation, full of profound sadness over the waste of such a beautiful, natural refuge. (SIB01, $22.95)
Singing Story, Healing Drum: Shamans and Storytellers of Turkic Siberia • Kira Van Deusen ART & ARCHITECTURE • 2004 • PAPER • 224 PAGES Van Deusen combines travel, field work and scholarship in this absorbing account of spiritual traditions, tales, music and religion among the Turkic peoples of Tuva and Khakassia in southern Siberia. (SIB43, $29.95)
Sleeping Beauty, A Legend in Progress • Tim Scholl CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 2004 • HARD COVER • 272 PAGES A history of Sleeping Beauty in the context of 20th century Russian Ballet -- and the surprisingly controversial response to a 1999 production. (RUS253, $40.00)
Solovki, The Story of Russia Told through Its Most Remarkable Islands • Roy Robson HISTORY • 2004 • HARD COVER • 304 PAGES Religious retreat, pilgrimage site, military fortress, tsarist prison camp and gulag, a remarkable amount of Russian history has played out among these remote arctic islands in Russia's White Sea. Robson traces the story of the Solovetski Archipelago from settlement by early monks, though its 17th-century expansion into one of the largest monasteries in the world and its 20th-century infamy as fortress and prison camp. With 30 illustrations. The islands were declared a natural and historical preserve in 1974 and a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1992. Roy Robson (who has also written about the Old Believers in modern Russia) is an associate professor of history at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. (SIB41, $30.00)
Soviet Blitzkrieg, The Battle for White Russia, 1944 • Walter S. Dunn HISTORY • 2008 • PAPER • 252 PAGES A history of the Russian campaign to regain control of Belarus from the invading Germans. A monumental battle staged in 1944, the details of events have finally come to light thanks to the release of previously classified military documents. (RUS121, $16.95)
The Soviet Space Race With Apollo • Asif A. Siddiqi HISTORY • 2003 • PAPER • 1005 PAGES Perhaps the most significant space history, Siddiqi's book is the first complete account of the Soviet space program, from the end of World War II through the mid-1970s. First published by NASA in 2000 as "Challenge to Apollo." (RUS304, $34.95)
Space Race, The Epic Battle Between America And the Soviet Union for Dominion of Space • Deborah Cadbury HISTORY • 2007 • PAPER • 384 PAGES Cadbury's history follows the stories of the two most important men involved in the design of the Soviet space program: the cold, authoritarian Werner von Braun and Sergei Korolev, a survivor of the Stalinist gulag. (RUS303, $24.95)
Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge • Asif A. Siddiqi HISTORY • 2003 • PAPER • 527 PAGES An amazing accomplishment in the writing of space history, Siddiqi's book scratches beneath the surface of the Soviet space history to understand its methods and implications in detail. (RUS305, $34.95)
St. Petersburg, A Cultural History • Solomon Volkov • Antonina Bouis HISTORY • 1995 • PAPER • 598 PAGES This intimate cultural history of the city includes profiles of its artists and writers over the last 300 years. The author is a native historian and musician who knew such luminaries as Balanchine and Brodsky. (RUS72, $38.95)
St. Petersburg, Russia's Window to the Future • Arthur George HISTORY • 2003 • HARD COVER • 512 PAGES • COMING IN A panoramic history of the city published in celebration of its tercentennial. George focuses on the cultural and intellectual life of St. Petersburg and its role as Russia's portal to Europe and the West. Opening with the building of the city by Peter the Great, he devotes chapters to individual Tsars and Tsarinas, Pushkin and Dostoyevsky's St. Petersburg, the Revolution, World War I, Seige of Leningrad siege, Soviet-era, and the present. (RUS248, $35.00)
Stalin, Breaker of Nations • Robert Conquest BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 1992 • PAPER • 384 PAGES A well known biography by Robert Conquest. (RUS249, $17.00)
Stalin, The Court of the Red Tsar • Simon Sebag Montefiore BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 2005 • PAPER • 848 PAGES An exhaustively researched "man-behind-the-monster" look at Joseph Stalin and his court. At 800 pages, there is ample room for personal and anecdotal information about Stalin -- down to his musical preferences -- as well as the gory details of the vicious politics and sexual quirks of the cast of characters that made up Stalin's political family. The lengthy volume includes new archival material, interviews with surviving figures of the era, and 24 pages of maps and photos. Montefiore has also written a biography of Prince Grigory Potemkin. (RUS228, $19.95)
Stalingrad, The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943 • Antony Beevor HISTORY • 1999 • PAPER • 491 PAGES With the benefit of Russian documents never before seen by Western scholars, German transcripts, and private letters and diaries, Beevor recasts the battle of Stalingrad, which broke the back of the Nazi army during the Second World War, in new and riveting detail. (RUS297, $18.00)
Stories from a Siberian Village • Vasily Shukshin • Laura Michael • John Givens • Kathleen Parthe LITERATURE • 1996 • PAPER • 256 PAGES A series of 25 stories from Russian author, actor and filmmaker Vasily Shukshin. Set in rural Siberia, these tales are not so much about the landscapes of the region, as they are about the people that inhabit them. (SIB19, $20.00)
A Summer on the Yenesei, 1914 • Maud D. Haviland TRAVEL NARRATIVE • 1971 • HARD COVER • 328 PAGES The charming account of an amateur British ornithologist on an expedition down the Yenesei to the Kara Sea in 1914. Though certainly dated (the shooting of birds for collection is done with great relish), the description of life on the Yenesei is veery well done. In addiiton to her impressions of nature and birds, Haviland records her encounters with Siberiak villagers and Samoyed people near the Gulf. (SIB08, $23.95)
Tales of Belkin and Other Prose Writings • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin LITERATURE • 1998 • PAPER • 198 PAGES This sampling of Pushkin's short stories includes his autobiographical "A Journey to Arzrum," the tale of travels from Moscow across the Caucasus and Georgia to Turkey during the war of 1829. Translated by Ronald Wilks with an introduction by John Bayley. (RUS232, $13.00)
The Taste of Dreams, An Obsession with Russia and Caviar • Vanora Bennett TRAVEL NARRATIVE • 2004 • PAPER • 276 PAGES In this informative, entertaining book, former Moscow correspondent Vanora Bennett explores the strange and powerful allure of the celebrated Russian delicacy. Bennett provides a detailed portrait of the history of caviar while coming to her own stirring realizations about the realities of modern Russia. (RUS226, $14.95)
Tchaikovsky Through Others' Eyes • Alenander Poznansky BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 1999 • HARD COVER • 311 PAGES Recollections of the master composer from his contemporaries. (RUS324, $39.95)
Teach Yourself Beginner's Russian Script • Daphne West LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS • 2003 • PAPER • 119 PAGES A step-by-step guide to reading and writing Cyrillic, organized into ten brief units. The book divides the alphabet in manageable chunks, covering 5012 letters, review, decorative handwritten script and vocabulary. (RUS207, $10.95)
Teach Yourself Beginner's Russian, An Easy Introduction • Rachel Farmer LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS • 1997 • CASETTE TAPE • 240 PAGES This comprehensive guide to the basics of spoken Russian includes a book and two audio cassettes, all packaged in a plastic case. You may also purchase the book separately (RUS124). (RUS110, $22.95)
Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories • Sholem Aleichem LITERATURE • 1996 • PAPER A winning collection of Yiddish tales (including, famously, the source material for Fiddler on the Roof) as translated by Hillel Halkin. (RUS170, $16.95)
Thomas Cook Travellers Moscow & St Petersburg • Chris Booth GUIDEBOOK • 2006 • PAPER • 192 PAGES A compact, easy-to-use guide to Moscow and St. Petersburg with maps, a synopsis of favorite sites and many photographs. (RUS293, $14.95)
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)
Track of the Tiger, Legend and Lore of the Great Cat • Maurice Hornocker NATURAL HISTORY • 1997 • HARD COVER • 120 PAGES A celebration of the tiger, this handsome book edited by Siberian tiger biologist Maurice Hornocker presents thoughtful short essays by conservationists and 75 color photographs. (BST19, $30.00)
Tragedy of Russia's Reforms, Market Bolshevism Against Democracy • Peter Reddaway • Dmitri Glinsky HISTORY • 2001 • PAPER • 768 PAGES A provocative, comprehensive analysis of economic modernization (or lack thereof) in today's Russia, especially critical of the policies of Yeltsin. (RUS162, $29.95)
Trans-Siberian Handbook • Bryn Thomas GUIDEBOOK • 2011 • PAPER • 512 PAGES A compact guide and history of the Trans-Siberian, featuring maps and practical details for cities and sights from St. Petersburg to Irkutsk, Ulan Bator, Beijing and Vladivostok. With 50 maps and 30 color photos. Excerpts from the book and others in the British series are online at www.trailblazer-guides.com. (RUS73, $21.95)
Transitional Citizens, Voters and What Influences Them in the New Russia • Timothy J. Colton HISTORY • 2000 • PAPER • 320 PAGES A scholarly, sophisticated account of Russian citizens and the vote since the collapse of the Soviet Union. With charts, graphs and extensive notes. (RUS158, $39.00)
A Travel Guide to Jewish Russia & Ukraine • Ben G. Frank GUIDEBOOK • 2000 • PAPER • 400 PAGES A focused, informative guide to both historical and contemporary sites of Jewish interest in cities, including St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, and Kishinev. With historical context, practical travel information and brief descriptions of synagogues, museums, monuments and schools. The author follows in the footsteps of the 12th-century Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela. This book follows the author's Travel Guide to Jewish Europe. (RUS173, $25.00)
A Traveller's Companion To Moscow • Laur Kelly ANTHOLOGY • 2004 • PAPER • 321 PAGES A splendid introduction to the city. (RUS294, $16.95)
A Traveller's Companion to St. Petersburg • 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)
Travels with Myself and Another, A Memoir • Martha Gellhorn TRAVEL NARRATIVE • 2001 • PAPER • 304 PAGES The "Another" of this title (also known as the unwilling companion), was Gellhorn's husband at the time, Ernest Hemingway. Her witty account of worldwide travels is a classic of unexpected encounters and sharp description. She's a marvelous, incisive writer who covered every important conflict from from the Spanish Civil War to Vietnam and Nicaragua. The book includes an uncomfortable journey to visit with Chiang Kai-Shek, a remarkbale look at dysfunctional Moscow, and escapades with Hemingway in East Africa. Originally published in 1979. Gellhorn died in 1998 at the age of eighty-nine. (TVL25, $15.95)
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)
The Turkish Gambit • Andrew Bromfield • Boris Akunin MYSTERY • 2006 • PAPER • 224 PAGES Detective Erast Fandorin is caught in Bulgaria in the middle of the brutal Russo-Turkish war in this thriller set in 1877. Boris Akunin's Erast Fandorin series have sold ten million copies in Russia alone. This is the third book to be translated into English. (RUS263, $14.00)
Two Sides of the Moon, Our Story of the Cold War Space Race • Tom Hanks • Neil Armstrong • Alexei Leonov • David Randolph Scott BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 2006 • PAPER • 448 PAGES Astronaut David Scott and cosmonaut Alexei Leonov provide a unique perspective on the space race in this dual autobiography. (RUS302, $19.99)
Ukraine Map • ITMB MAP A map of Ukraine, at a scale of 1:1,000,000. Two Sides. 27 X 39 inches. (RUS86, $11.95)
Ultimate Spy • H. Keith Melton • Markus Wolf • DK Publishing • Richard Helms HISTORY • 2009 • HARD COVER • 208 PAGES A treasure trove for espionage buffs, this ingeniously arranged collection of gadgets, documents and archival photographs is drawn from the Cold War peak of international intrigue. Published by those masters of graphic design at DK Publishing, it's an entertaining and informative look at double-agents and the tools of their trade. (SPY16, $22.95)
Valery Gergiev and the Kirov, A Story of Survival • John Ardoin MUSIC • 2001 • HARD COVER • 296 PAGES Both a sumptuously illustrated history of St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater (aka the Kirov) and a portrait of its enthusiastic and talented artistic director, Valery Gergiev. (RUS212, $34.95)
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)
War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy • Constance Garnett LITERATURE • 1983 • PAPER • 1344 PAGES This great historical and philosophical novel set in the age of Napoleon portrays Russia through the lives of three aristocratic families united by love and separated by war during the invasion. As the men learn about courage, character and death through the initiation of war, a young woman learns about her feelings, emotions and passions as she is initiated into love. (RUS20, $10.95)
We Now Know, Rethinking Cold War History • John Lewis Gaddis HISTORY • 1998 • PAPER • 425 PAGES The eminent Cold War scholar, John Lewis Gaddis, takes advantage of the opening of Soviet archives to re-examine the tension between the U.S. and U.S.S.R through the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. (RUS191, $24.99)
Wine Country Europe, Touring, Tasting, And Buying At European Regional Wineries • Ornella D'Alessio • Marco Santini FOOD • 2005 • HARD COVER • 324 PAGES Part how-to, part guidebook, part picture book, this charming coffee table treat covers sprawling French vineyards as well as lesser-known hidden treasures in Austria and Hungary. The authors, both Italian journalists and wine connoisseurs, provide helpful tips alongside the hundreds of magnificent color photographs. (EUR191, $35.00)
With the Armies of the Tsar, A Nurse at the Russian Front in War and Revolution, 1914-1918 • Frances Farmborough HISTORY • 2000 • PAPER • 422 PAGES An extraordinary memoir of life on the battlefield by an English governess in Moscow who volunteered her services as a nurse in WWI. A witness to the 1917 revolution, she accompanied Russia's troops in Poland, Austria and Rumania, finally fleeing to Vladivostok from where she escaped home to Britain. With 50 of Farmborough's photographs. (RUS139, $19.95)
A Woman in Amber • Agate Nesaule BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 1997 • PAPER • 280 PAGES The author, who fled rural Latvia on the heels of the Russian advance at the age of seven, chronicles the terrible dislocations of World War II. In this American Book Award-winning memoir, she tells the powerful story of what she witnessed and experienced as a young girl during the war. Ultimately a testimony to survival, this book brings to light a terrible knowledge of rape, torture and execution. (RUS30, $16.00)
Women of the Four Winds • Elizabeth Olds BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR • 1999 • PAPER • 336 PAGES Former president of the Society of Women Geographers, journalist Olds rescues four extraordinary 20th-century American women from obscurity in this collection of four short, lively biographies. All showed remarkable courage and perseverance. She includes Annie Smith Peck, a climber who was the first American and first woman to summit Huascaran in Peru (at age 60); Delia Akeley, an African explorer and big game hunter who more than kept up with her famous husband; Marguerite Harrison, an American spy in Lubianka prison in Soviet Russia; and Louise Arner Boyd who capped a lifetime of Arctic exploration with a flight over the North Pole at age 67. Originally published in 1985. (EXP19, $21.95)

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