Ely's elegant prose drew this reader, who knows little of Russia, into a new landscape and illuminated the ways it was seen (and not seen) by its nineteenth century inhabitants. Although I was familiar with references to the Russian landscape in literature, I knew nothing of the Russian landscape painters of the nineteenth century. Ely introduces this fascinating subject and guides one through the work of such painters as Shishkin and Vasil'ev (with fine illustrations) to an appreciation of the way they saw and painted their native land. He then links this to a developing sense of national identity in the Russia of this period.
I was particularly interested in what this suggests about the role of a nation's landscape in its national myth, in the role it plays as a source of common pride in one's country and the ways we choose to portray specific features of our landscape to ourselves.
A good read from start to finish.

Yet another criminally ignored writer. While Chekhov isn't exactly "well-known," he's at least widely recognized, and relatively inexpensive editions of some of his works are available from the likes of Penguin Classics. No such luck for Maksim Gorkii, despite his being one of the best authors of all time. This is, in fact, the first time I have seen an English translation of "Through Russia." For the intents and purposes of this review, I'll assume that this is the same "Through Russia" as the one I read - a collection of Gorkii's short stories. Okay, then.

Gorkii is perhaps the spiritually strongest human being to ever have lived. His three-part autobiography will reveal that he did not grow up in a very happy family, and that's putting it very lightly. Then, before he even entered his teenage years, he was already "among the people," working like the others, and face-to-face with the most grim, banal and disgusting aspects of modern life. But he didn't break under it. Not a chance. Instead of succumbing, he not only managed to maintain his personal honour, grace and dignity, but also sought and fought for something more than the world offered, which he found in the form of books. Surrounded by ignorance and apathy, he nonetheless managed to retain his love of books and of truth - and took it with him to the road. Far from trying to escape life, Gorkii took it on head-to-head, and won. He travelled all over Russia, saw all sorts of people, worked at all kinds of jobs, and saw more in his lifetime than most people ever will, and this book is the result. It is a series of sketches and stories, all of which were directly recorded from his experiences. And what a book it is.

Gorkii's books are life. They're not even Naturalistic - Naturalists researched life, but didn't necessarily record it exactly. Gorkii's books _are_ life. What you're reading is what happened. And it's absolutely amazing. There are unbearable amounts of apathy, dirt and indignity in life, but there are the people, few and far between, who redeem all of it, who rise above their surroundings and shine. Gorkii was such a person, and others are present in this book. Perhaps that ultimately life-affirming reassurance, the knowledge that there are people who know the true value of the world, that makes Gorkii's books so powerful, and what made their author capable of beating life.

Not all of the stories are overwhelmingly powerful. In the middle, the book drags somewhat, apparently retreading the territory of other Gorkii works such as "Okurov Town." But some of these are literally some of the best stories ever written. I can only try to describe them; you'll have to read them. First we have "Birth of a Man," which basically summarizes Gorkii's major theme in fifteen pages. More powerful, however, is "Woman." I don't think I'll ever be able to forget the title character. But the real force of the book comes in the last three stories. First we have one with an untranslatable title, about an encounter the author has with the utter dregs of society, rejected even by the drunks and the freaks, a story about poverty, humanity, and survival. Then we shift gears completely for the odd, almost surreal story of an encounter with a decrepit old farm and its inhabitants in some desert. (I swear, I -heard- the woman sing...) And last is another desert story, wistful and melancholy with a violent conclusion. Its title character's sort of nonchalant fatalism is also not easy to forget. "First I'm here, then I have to leave. At home I have a friend, I leave and he betrays me. When spirits laugh, people cry. That's the way things are..."

I realize I haven't exactly done a good job of describing what these are about, but it's something one has to experience for themselves. Think nothing of the price and buy this book. I hope to hell that the translation is at least competent.

I have the original 1891 edition of this book & never thought I'd see a reprint! This is an incredibly articulate & fascinating account of a journalist from the American West travelling through late 19th century Russia, meeting the figures of the moment, like Tolstoy, & buying, describing & selling horses as his means of transport & companionship. He describes the major cities & their cultures with a down-to-earth American eye, without prejudice. ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIC!

Elena Kozhina's Through the Burning Steppe: A Wartime Memoir is so much more than a highly compelling narrative of the horrors and heroism experienced by a young Russian girl and her mother during World War II. It is also a revealing glimpse into the realities of life in the Soviet Union, not just during the war, but from its earliest years to its final decade. It is a chronicle of a young person's growing literary, artistic and cultural awareness. And it is, ultimately, a timeless story - not simply of good and evil, or of simple joys amid enormous tragedy, but also of human frailties and strengths, of ruthlessness and compassion, of islands of clarity in a sea of complexity. This gem of a book packs volumes of interest - and of insight - into its fewer than 200 beautifully written pages. I recommend it highly.

I think everyone should read this book. It only serves to make us realise how lucky we are and how we, especially in the West, can have nothing to complain about. The sufferings of the various women who in some cases had to fell trees in -50 degrees centigrade for 600grms of bread a day is inspirational. At some points I felt that I was ready fictional accounts as I found it hard to believe that mans inhumanity to man, or in this case, woman could be so mind numbingly awful - and for what.....truly terrifying. Exceptional read you will not be able to put it down and the strength of character of the women will stay with you long after you have finished the book.

This is an excellent and innovative examination of the effects the Marxist approach to time had on the Soviet Union. A masterful blend of historical and philosophical discourse--a great read!

In 1890, Anton Chekhov traveled across Russia to the island of Sakhalin to visit a prison colony there and write a book about what he found. The trip was so arduous as to be almost suicidal, and no-one has ever clearly understood why Chekhov desired such a journey.

James McConkey's To a Distant Island is partially a chronicle of Chekhov's journey, but there is much more to the book than that. McConkey uses Chekhov's letters, the book he wrote when he returned, and various biographies to weave a speculative narrative. There are many gaps in the documentary evidence, and McConkey fills these gaps in with fictional scenes and suppositions, adding color and depth where previously there have only been shadows. He links moments in the journey to Chekhov's own stories and plays with tremendous insight -- indeed, McConkey's odd book offers some of the best literary criticism of Chekhov written in English.

Additionally, the book is a sort of memoir. McConkey first discovered Chekhov's Sakhalin letters while traveling in Florence and fleeing depression and discontent with his life, a confluence of psychology and situation which allowed him to be particularly empathetic to Chekhov's journey. At first, his discussion of himself within the book seemed anachronistic and intrusive, but I came to enjoy and even relish the memoiristic elements of To a Distant Island as much as I did the material about Chekhov.

I don't know of another book like To a Distant Island. It is lyrical, surprising, informative, and deeply affecting. Chekhov comes alive far more in this slim volume than in all the hundreds of pages of Donald Rayfield's exhaustive recent biography. This book could serve as a fine introduction to Chekhov's life and works, it could be tremendously fascinating to people who are already familiar with Chekhov, and I expect it would even prove to be a rewarding read for lovers of literature in general who have no particular interest in Chekhov. At the very least, if you appreciate fine writing, you will appreciate this book.

We've come a long, long way since an American by the name of Perry M. Collins first envisioned a world interconnected by an overland telegraph line. That was back in the 1850s, and despite the efforts of over a decade - as well as the commercial might of Western Union - the efforts to make Perry's vision a reality were rendered obsolete by the completion of the Atlantic cable in 1866.

If the nineteenth-century transition from unwired to wired was spectacular in its social, political, and economic consequences, the twentieth-century move from wired back to unwired is proving even more remarkable. Just as a "telegraph army" was deployed by Western Union to take the overland telegraph line up to British Columbia, through modern-day Alaska, and so toward Siberia in order to connect America with Europe via Asiatic Russia, so today a wireless horde is spreading its unplugged message like wildfire in ever-decreasing circles of influence.

John Dwyer's meticulously researched book serves as a trumpet-blast for modern society's undying technical ingenuity and sheer passion for "connexity"... No one who operates in today's digital environment can fail to be fascinated by his tale of how these men surveyed, explored, and operated in dangerous - sometimes even life-threatening -environments to build the line from 1865 to 1867, only to find those risks made unnecessary by history.

Maybe those risking their capital and reputation on wireless technologies du jour like Bluetooth and WAP would do well to heed the lesson in TO WIRE THE WORLD, which is that technical vision alone isn't enough: the history of technology has also to be on your side!

This is the translation that I first read (years after it was published) and loved. The novel has been around a long time but its attraction can be won or lost according to the translation. Another, later translation irked me so much that I didn't want to finish reading it. Now that I've found my favorite translation -- which I think is more poetic and does better justice to the style and mood of the Russian original -- I'm buying a copy for myself and one for a gift to someone in high school.

In a very thoughtful and lucid book, Piirainen examines the economic transitions that are occurring in Russia (he focuses on the St. Petersburg region), especially the switch from a status-oriented economy to a market-oriented economy. He demonstrates how one's ability to transfer individual resources (i.e. personal connections, high level links to state industry) from the old regime to the new regime influences one's status in the new regime. He also examines the different economic resource strategies of different groups (he uses a small amount of rational choice theory to do this). Disadvantaged groups tended to devote their resources to the shadow economy while the new entrepreneurs devoted their resources to the market economy. The bulk of the citizens divided their resources up between the market economy (small entrepreneurship & 'bazaar capitalism') and the Soviet economy (keeping their old jobs for security, despite the fact that inflation ate the relative size of their salary's purchase power) to develop a 'diversified portfolio' of sorts. An excellent piece of work that's also entertaining as well..