Russia Books

This book told me that in afterlife the person remains the same as he was in his terrestrial existence. Probably, his personality stays intact for a long time. Vysotsky continues with poems that sound familiar -- as if written on earth. After his death, he is still interested in the same subjects; he loves and hates the same people. However, in afterlife, he sees things deeper and grows to the final summary of his life - the concert on an astral stadium. Now the spirit communicator has to move on to a higher dimension, and the contact is not possible any more.

As a person who had lived in the former Soviet Union, I was impressed by the preciseness of the descriptions of bizarreness and abnormalities of day-by-day life in the former Soviet Union. The Russian spirit messages in original and their translation in the English are not always literally same. I think, the author was right when in translation she stressed things that wouldn't be understood otherwise. The details are presented in a way that both groups of readers - the English-speaking readers and the Russian-speaking readers will understand them according to their preliminary knowledge of the subject matter. The text is fluent in both languages, as it would be expected from a writer used to be published in three languages - Estonian, Russian and English. Definitely, this book, providing complex picture of after life, will help English-speaking world to see connectedness of both worlds, where the Russian passion to survive is stemming from. It will help Russians to find their identity in this swiftly changing world.

Dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the death of Vladimir Vysotsky (1938-1980) the icon and rebel of Russian poetry, this bi-lingual (Russian/English) edition of Channeling Vysotsky: A Poet's Journey From Limbo Into The Light, translated by Tatyana Tanika is a remarkable study of the timeless poets afterlife and his substantial influence from beyond the grave. Recognizing Vysotsky's iconoclastic influence and living persuasion, Channeling Vysotsky produces an exclusive biographical and metaphysical study of one of Russia's most engaging poets and musicians in a bilingual format of Russian and English. Channeling Vysotsky is very highly recommended to all supporters of the once comprehensive intentions and post-life spiritual furtherment of the great poetic hero Vladimir Vysotsky and his timeless works.

If you have ever wondered about the great Vysotsky, here is the book for you. Tatyana has explored this poet from every angle, and her observations are fresh and fascinating. You can feel the inspiration pop off the page as if this were a fragrant loaf of bread she had just pulled out of the oven.

Wish I could read the Russian, too! But just reading the English portions of the book, it's a triumph.

Alex was an amazing man. I was privileged to meet and get to know him during the last year of his life. His wisdom, his honesty and his heart will never be forgotten my me or, I dare say, anyone who knew him. He gave me an autographed copy of his book and I have read it several times. This is not just a story, it's a remarkable man opening his heart, to share his experience, even though it hurt. He was never afraid of that pain, but faced it with courage, hope and a powerful love of life and the world and the people around him.

I heartily recommend this book, do read it.


Do Svidaniya, Rest in peace, Child of the Kulaks.

this book is sort of sad but it is also very suspicious and breathtaking i think that it is really good but its sad how many people die. two brothers go to china then to australian from russia.one dies but the other then returns to russia for a visit sixty years later!!!!

Alex Saranin's story is a vivid description of the first lost generation of Soviet Russia, millions of children lost their parents into the civil war, collectivization and other soviet human mills and it's aftermath. The great suffering endured by them and the waste of lives and souls is great evidence of these terrible whirling years into which a whole generation was engulfed.

I have stacks of books about this era, and about Russia in general, but none of them give the flavor of the time and place quite so vividly as Troyat's narrative. He follows the adventures of a British businessman who is virtually adopted by a Russian family during his first visit to Moscow. The descriptions of family life, night life -- including the theater, the ballet, and restaurants and cabarets, of religion, and even of the streets, are filtered through the consciousness of a stranger, and so are more clearly described and, where necessary, explained than in books in which everyday life is more of a background to the rest of the narrative.

If you're a student of Russian history, particularly the history of this particular era, this book is highly recommended. For writers who are researching the era, this is on the level of the Writer's Digest "Everyday Life..." series for information, and really indispensable. Even so, this is not some dry text. It's lively and occasionally amusing, and always fascinating.

Imagine time-traveling with a smart gentleman who is energetic, enthusiastic, sociable, and just happened to have lived there 'then.' This is the seamless, appropriately elaborate, and richly detailed adventure one experiences in reading this book. Troyat called this book a mere "sentimental promenade,' but he was much too modest. Biographer of Flaubert, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Elizabeth I and others, he had a pre-Revolutionary Russian early childhood, and the recollections of his (refugees-to-France) family members. In this book he enthusiastically and carefully recreates the sights, sounds, smells of daily life. The peasantry, workers and their everpresent sufferings and struggles, commerce, law, food, the gentry, the tsar and his retinue, social life, the hapless serfs, plus plans, hopes, and dreams. The chapter "Moscow's Many Faces" is reminiscence, and very informative. The research is the backbone of this work, which is greatly enriched and informed by Troyat's emotional ties to -- and sensory recall of -- the time and place.

A well-crafted historical resource for anyone interested in Russia under Nicolas II. It covers a wide range of daily life - everything from how the trains ran to steam baths to military service to haute cuisine of the time. I became so immersed in this book that at times I felt like I was there.

This is truly great book. Unlike many history books it is written in a very readable style. I have read the original diplomatic transcripts of some of the key meetings here. This book brings them alive. It is also a very good book in getting into the psychology of totalitarianism. Hitler was probably the man Stalin most admired. A good book to read with this is Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939 - 1941: Documents from the Archives of the German Foreign Office.

I view this book very differently than the other reviewer, although both of us rated it 5 stars. I found this book to be one of the best written history books I have ever seen. While it is factual, it is never boring or dry. It is well researched, well written, informative AND interesting.

The book is about the dance that Stalin did with Hitler. Stalin desperately needed to industrialize his country quickly. Hitler was equally desperate for raw materials. The two dictators grudgingly traded something to each other. Stalin knowing that those raw materials would soon be used against his country!

If you enjoy reading this book, I urge you to read any of the many works authored by Sir Martin Gilbert; especially his official biography of Winston Churchill titled "Churchill: A Life."

This is the story of how the world's two greatest (or worst) totalitarian powers reached an agreement to carve Europe between them. Hitler was obsessed with avoiding a two-front war as happened to Germany in WWI. This time, though, the situation was reversed. He sought to knock out the Western powers first before turning to the East. France and England were the major worries at the moment.

Stalin also wanted a free hand as he sought to restore the USSR's border's to pre-Revolution range. This naturally included a division of Poland and the absorption of part of Eastern Europe. One is struck at the gall of these powers sitting at a map and drawing lines, dividing the civilized world into spheres of influece, knowing all the while that in the end, they will have to fight.

The authors record the pre-talks, the feelers, the struggles of the Western powers to stop this deal at any cost. But Hitler was determined to press ahead and secure at least half of his border. There are several mini-tales included that were affected by the treaty - the tragic dismemberment of Poland, the Russian rape of Finland, the beginning of a pattern embraced by both powers and continued by the USSR after the war: The absurd claim that a government would ask either power to invade its territory in order to crush "warmongers".

Both nations shocked their supporters - Germans were puzzled as to why such an agreement was needed with its arch-enemy. Leftists worldwide were struck dumb as their hero, Stalin, smiled and signed on the dotted line. But there was nothing to fear. As the fighting wore on and England refused to bow, Hitler planned the final punch - knock the USSR out of the war and England would be forced to sue for peace. It was almost a success but the supply lines and huge area became a quagmire and the lost retreat was in place. The treaty had served its purpose and like most treaties signed with totalitarian powers it remained in force as long as it was needed.

Since I am intensely interested in the subject of the American involvement in the intervention of North Russia just after the First World War (where the U.S. 339th Infantry fought against the 6th Red Army), I have a good many books on the subject, from "Fighting the Bolsheviki" to the more recent "Stillborn Crusade," and I have notes I made while researching original documents at the U.S. Library of Congress. But when I want to think in broader terms, I always pull out my copy of "The Decision to Intervene." It allows me to review the general situation at the time, including the activities of the Red Cross (who put the "Red" in the "Red Cross" Ha! Ha!), the U.S. troops in Siberia, and the Czechslovak situation at the time. I would be lost without this book. I highly recommend it!

The Decision to Intervene by George F. Kennan is Volume II of his History of Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920. (See my review of Volume I, Russia Leaves the War.)

The Decision to Intervene picks up in early 1918. The Bolsheviks had overthrown the democratically-oriented Provisional Government of Russia which came to power in February 1917 and had negotiated a separate truce with the Germans, taking Russia out of WWI. The details of a formal Russian-German peace treaty were undergoing tortuous negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. In the course of the war, Russia's allies, Britain, France, Italy, and, later, the US and Japan, had supplied significant quantities of strategic raw materials, arms, and munitions to Russia. Large stockpiles were still present at Vladivostok in the Far East and Archangel in the far northwest. Fearing that these strategic materials might be seized by or transferred to the Germans, the French, British and Italians favored landing allied troops to safeguard them. The Japanese supported this position, provided that they could unilaterally land their troops in Vladivostok, with American blessing, to create a bridgehead into Manchuria and Siberia.

At this time there was also allied great concern that large numbers of German troops would be transferred from the eastern to the western front for a major offensive. By introducing some allied troops into Russia, the allies hoped to tie down an even larger number of German forces who might otherwise be sent west.

For roughly the first half of 1918, President Wilson opposed intervention, and this opposition was sufficient to deter the allies. Around May of 1918, Raymond Robins, whom we met in Volume I as head of the American Red Cross mission to Russia and our informal point of contact with the Bolsheviks, was withdrawn from Russia. His self-appointed role as advocate of recognition of and aid to the Bolsheviks had come to naught, though he did not realize it for some months to come.

At almost the same time as Robins departure, the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia was attacked by Red Guards. Czechoslovakia was then part of the Austrian Empire but its population dreamed of independence. The Czech Legion, about 30,000 well trained troops, fought against the Germans and Austrians alongside the Russian Army until Russia left the war. The Czechs had no intention of making peace with the Germans and Austrians but could not continue fighting on Russian territory. Consequently, they attempted to make their way east to Vladivostok from which point they hoped the allies would provide sea transport to the western front. The Bolsheviks, perhaps in response to German pressure, demanded that the Czechs surrender most of their arms and repeatedly delayed their passage along the Trans-Siberian Railway. When the Czechs refused to disarm, Red Guards ambushed them at Irkutsk. The Czechs fought back quite effectively, eventually captured the Trans-Siberian Railway all the way from Vladivostok to the Urals, and were joined by various anti-communist Russian forces. This was the start of the Russian Civil War.

By this time, the Bolsheviks had acceded to all German conditions and signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, permanently taking Russia out of the war. Also, the British had landed a few troops in Archangel and Murmansk in the north and the Japanese had landed a major force in Vladivostok. Finally, the Bolsheviks had murdered the Tsar and all his family.

These combined events prompted the other allies to again approach President Wilson with another request for support for intervention. This time Wilson acceded, partly out of emotional support for the Czechs and partly because he feared he had refused the allies' requests too many times already. However, his decision was not coordinated with the allies or anyone else, including the rest of the US Government. His orders to US troops sent to Russia were incredibly contradictory. For example: (1) Support the Czechs but do not get involved in internal Russian conflicts. (How do you do that when the Czechs are fighting the Bolsheviks?) (2) Proceed to Murmansk and report to the senior British officer who is to command all allied forces there. However, do not leave the port area for the interior. (How do you respond when the British commander says "Go!"?)

During the entire period from the February 1917 Revolution through the intervention, Wilson never consulted with his ambassador in Russia. He ran a one-man foreign policy. Worse, his decisions were half-hearted, more often indecisions than decisions. Kennan summarizes Wilson's role in the intervention eloquently: "By failing, in this way, to follow through on the implementation of his own decision, the President contrived to get the worst of all possible worlds: he irritated the British and French with his obiter dicta and drew onto himself, ultimately, the blame for the failure of the entire venture (on the grounds that the United States contribution had been too little and too late); he did not prevent the US units from being used for precisely the purposes for which he said they should not be used; nor did he withdraw them, as he said he would, when they were thus used; yet he did prevent them from having any proper understanding of the purposes for which they were being used; finally, he rendered the US vulnerable to the charge, which Soviet propagandists have never ceased to exploit, of interfering by armed force in Soviet domestic affairs." (page 421)

That's some condemnation. The antidote for this type of disaster is the (Colin) Powell Doctrine: Don't enter into armed conflict unless you do so with an overwhelmingly superior force and the determination to see the conflict through to a successful conclusion.

Since I am intensely interested in the subject of the American involvement in the intervention of North Russia just after the First World War (where the U.S. 339th Infantry fought against the 6th Red Army), I have a good many books on the subject, from "Fighting the Bolsheviki" to the more recent "Stillborn Crusade," and I have notes I made while researching original documents at the U.S. Library of Congress. But when I want to think in broader terms, I always pull out my copy of "The Decision to Intervene." It allows me to review the general situation at the time, including the activities of the Red Cross (who put the "Red" in the "Red Cross" Ha! Ha!), the U.S. troops in Siberia, and the Czechslovak situation at the time. I would be lost without this book. I highly recommend it!

Taruskin's name is associated by the experienced reader of Russian music books with texts of in-depth treatment, rigorous demands of his texts for clarity and entertaining style for the non-scholar reader. Defining Russian Music offers through a series of essays a description very accurate of what Russian music is from the beginning of the formation of a Russian musical identity to the Soviet period and, what I think is more important, why it shows these characteristics. A passage I found very interesting explains the origin of a Pushkin's poem and compares settings of it by three composers from different periods. A non rough-reading text, fully illustrated with musical examples, this book is a must-have for people who appreciate Russian composers and their work as all Taruskin's books up to now.

Taruskin's name is associated by the experienced reader of Russian music books with texts of in-depth treatment (I bet nobody could research more exhaustively on Stravinsky), rigorous demands of his texts for clarity and entertaining style for the non-scholar reader. Defining Russian Music offers through a series of essays a description very accurate of what Russian music is from the beginning of the formation of a Russian musical identity to the Soviet period and, what I think is more important, why it shows these characteristics. A passage I found very interesting explains the origin of a Pushkin's poem and compares settings of it by three composers from different periods. A non rough-reading text, fully illustrated with musical examples, this book is a must-have for people who appreciate Russian composers and their work as all Taruskin's books up to now.

Musical scholarship today is like a dialogue within itself as well as informing the larger populace, sometimes you don't know which comes first. But here Taruskin must draw battle lines in the sand so to stake a claim,like the one against his benign enemy Peter van den Toorn. Taruskin is this side of the scholarship that shuns the guild system of note to note musical analysis the kind the Schenkerian ideologies have spawned in academia today. This is why his insights are so fascinating. It is incredible to think of all the Russians you hear at primary concert venues throughout the United States it seems we have had virtually nothing to guide our listening habits The music of Shostakovich is a great example,what we have had to guide our listening is his music was a veiled critique of the tyrannical Stalinist system that brutalized and pulverized culture,no one disagrees here. But one important question we never seem to have answered including Taruskin here, was Shostakovich a socialist,what did he actually think of the economic systems of the West?. Taruskin in two brilliant essays one on Shostakovich's opera "Lady Macbeth" and the other on the "Fifth Symphony" we have insights we have heard before, again Shostakovich the culture hero victim.. We also learn of Stravinsky's reactionary cast. I really didn't know he was an anti-Semite. Well you might say how does this effect his composition?. Well Taruskin makes a good argument for Stravinsky's treatments of subject matter, as in the obvious anti-social dimensions in the "Rite of Spring" where the virgin is sacrificed as an inevitability, no resortment to struggle, a concept anathema to Stravinsky. What this kind of social scholarship unleashes is at the very heart of the music's value It is easy to see now Stravinsky's brutalization of sound,not only in the obvious choice of the "Rite of Spring" but Stravinsky's taming his voices subjecting them to a passivity,to a one-dimensional function, as part of a texture,And where has Stravinsky found his voice when there is one?, in borrowings,particulary Russian folk. These four last hermeneutical essays are for me the high point of this volume. Also Scriabin and Tchaikovsky complete it. I never understood any scholarship for Tchaikovsky, what's there to discuss,his relations with the Tsar's aristocracy? Except that Taruskin works at another level of contemplation,in saying things as this music has an immediacy that is borne through lived experience, it is not premeditated music, the kind we find in the West with an obsession for global order and pitch configurations. You will always find something to think about(even in Tchaikovsky)t with this kind of social and political scholarship which Taruskin espouses.

Imperial Russia was visited by early aviators and was instantly fascinated by airplanes. Because Russia was the most backward of the great nations, its leaders, beginning with Peter the Great, sought to modernize the country to compete with other Western European nations. Could aviation give Russian leaders the right tool to spark modernization?

Airplanes were sent into rural areas for the first time to be inspected by villagers. Pilots answered questions, passed out literature and gave free flights to amazed peasants.

Dr. Scott W. Palmer explains how "rural believers were taken into the air by pilots in order to prove that there was no God, angels or other celestial spirits in the heavens. Anti-religious flights proved so successful that they quickly became standard practice."

Dr. Palmer describes aviation's powerful propaganda value. "The mastery of the airplane would make possible backward Russia's rapid transformation into the world's most advanced and powerful nation."

Russia's leaders were in a hurry to gain legitimacy from mastering aviation. Russia set about acquiring airplanes and manufacturing methods from other countries in her haste to build legitimacy in the world's eyes.

For years, the Russian aviation industry struggled to do more than make poor copies of airplanes from other nations.

Dr. Palmer relates, "They embellished actual accomplishments, exaggerating, and at times inventing, Russian achievements when, in fact, much less progress had been made."

Record setting flights were carried out to bring world attention to Russian aviation through goodwill. Soviet leaders deliberately insisted on developing the largest airplanes in the world, even if the had no practical value other than propaganda.

Soviet leaders praised their air crews as heroes that flew to better their homeland and "benefit their fellow countrymen" -- not for money and fame -- like Charles Lindbergh had.

With the country stuck in depression, the American aircraft industry eagerly sought sales anywhere it could. In an effort to find customers , the Soviets were invited to visit American factories. As delegation after delegation came and went, Soviet industrial spies quickly set about stealing manufacturing secrets and techniques.

In the Spanish Civil War, Russian military aircraft were proved to be most inferior, and she entered World War II poorly equipped. After the war, German designers and manufacturing technology were taken back to Russia for assimilation into the aviation industry.

By 1947, Russia was able to reverse-engineer a fair copy of the American B-29 Superfortress. Then, at last, Russia was able to surprise the west during the Korean War by developing the Mig jet fighter series by incorporating state-of-the-art British jet engine technology.

Readers interested in aviation or Russian history will find "Dictators of the Air" a fascinating study of one area of Russia's age-old struggle to surpass the west.

"Dictators of the Air" contains sixty illustrations. Dr. Palmer has included many aviation posters that incorporate specific symbols and images for propaganda purposes by the Soviets. The selection of primitive Russian aircraft photographs is very entertaining.

Dictatorship of the Air is an innovative, thoroughly researched and very well-written book on a fascinating subject: the meaning and influence of aviation in Russian history. The author, Scott Palmer, uses an impressive number of archival materials and contemporary sources to build the case that the Russian approach to aeronautical modernization (combining state initiative, crash campaigns, and the acquisition of foreign technology) ultimately achieved far less than Imperial and Soviet leaders claimed. The book's treatment of technology transfer is particularly effective. Palmer does an terrific job explaining the internal economic and ideological factors that forced Russian officials to use espionage to keep up with competitors in Western Europe and the US. The book also contains (among other things) a fascinating discussion of the various "prestige" flights of the 1930s, insightful analysis of the religious foundations of Soviet-era aviation propaganda, and more than four dozen photographs and illustrations that readers will find nowhere else. This is certain to become the point of departure for future work on the history of Russian aviation. ***Highly recommended***

Palmer's book isn't another treatise about the design of Russain
aircraft or WWII military air campaigns. Instead readers will find a sophisticated treatment of original Russian sources, including newspapers, propaganda, poetry, and insitutional state directives that provides a myriad of perspectives on a single, but monumental, event in the history of mankind: human flight. The story of flight in Russia is more compelling and offers a greater understanding of Russian-Soviet life than similar histories of European and American aviation because it
coincided with another unprecendent and no less monumental event: the establishment of the Soviet Union.

Palmer argues that state officials in both Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union latched on to aviation as symbol and tool of their nation's progress and as proof of their standing in the modern world. Importantly, while the Russian autocracy failed to successfuly create a nation of fliers through voluntary associations (as was acheived in Western Europe and the United States), the Soviet Union also failed to do so, and rather spectacularly. As in many other endeavors, Soviet officials refused to face the difficulties inherent in their undertaking. They sought to create both a modern state and a modern aviation culture by fiat. Palmer rather dramatically explains how the
tragic story of the Soviets' failed attempt unfolded to the detriment of their citizens.

The book's numerous photographs, prints, and propaganda posters as well as Palmer's original translations of poetry, literature, and state archival material make this a book that stands out from its scholarly peers. Between these fascinating materials and Palmer's elegant prose one almost forgets that this is a work from an academic press.

Palmer's history is well researched and his depiction of avaition under the Imperial and Soviet regime is convincing. My only quibble is with the final chapter wherein Palmer makes a nod to the post WWII era of Russian history arguing that subsequent events demonstrate continuity with the patterns he has described for the first half of the 20 century. It is only in hindsight (and after 1991, save Robert Conquest) that one
could refer to the Soviet period of Russia's history as a complete failure. Given the obstacles and backwardness that so many historians, like Palmer, have described in the Imperial and the Soviet eras, it may be worth examining in more detail the relative success, however ugly the means, that the Soviets achieved in space flight and creating an air fleet second only to the United States during the height of the Cold War.

Joseph Frank, generally considered the world's foremost expert on Dostoyevsky, provides all the background you would ever need to truly understand the great mind that was Dostoyevsky. An indispensable guide to the master's great works.

Joseph Frank's biography of Dostoievsky is a picture of the artist in the context of his century. It is not only a brilliant portrait of a great man but an image of nineteenth century Russia. It is neither patronizing nor overly analytic, but provides a taste of Dostoievky's life - making his thoughts, actions, and writings fuse into a coherent whole. I have probably read hundreds of biographies in my life and this one is the best.

Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871

"It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half."
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Literary biography is a tough genre. The challenge for the biographer is to avoid doing a hatchet job on the one hand, and being a shill on the other (Max Brod's panegyric to Kafka comes to mind). Among the best at the genre are Richard Ellman (James Joyce, Oscar Wilde); Ron Powers (Mark Twain) and Joseph Frank, whose massive, five-volume biography of Dostoevsky is a marvel.
Frank succinctly sums up his task: "The aim of literary biography, as I conceive it, is to furnish readers with a context, drawn from the writer's personal life,as well as from the social, cultural, literary and philosphical background of his or her time, that will help toward a better understanding of the work."

The son of an abusive alcoholic father and a consumptive mother; a compulsive gambler, introspective and melancholic; given to epileptic seizures; sentenced to a Gulag and forced to serve in a Russian regiment; chronically broke and peripatetic; variously lionized and demonized by his critics and supporters -- there's enough material in Dostoevsky's life for a five volume biography, which, written over a 30 year period, Frank provides.

Of course he has a lot to work with: Dostoevsky left reams of material, including diaries, notebooks, letters, and manuscripts. His collected works, in Russian, run to 30 volumes. Frank makes ample use of this material, especially in his analysis of Dostoevsky's major works in this period, "Crime and Punishment," "The Idiot," and "The Devils." Like a bipolar person, Dostoevsky swung from deep depression to exalted heights. He could plumb the depths of human depravity one minute, and celebrate the heights of the human spirit the next.

An example is one of his frequent gambling binges. "(The letter) also contains a frank admission of his recent gambling escapades, which Dostoevsky explains, in his usual fashion, in terms of the lure of freeing himself from debt in one miraculous stroke. "In one fell swoop to get out of all these proceedings with his creditors, provide for myself for a time and for my family. "But Dostoevsky is honest enough to add that gambling contains its own vertiginous attraction ("You know how that draws you in") (Frank, P. 224)

Frank's scholarship is exemplary, his writing lucid, and his subject mesmerizing.

If somebody want to know more about the history of central Asia, to read about the Great Game is a must. This excellent book explain, in a very engaging way, the latest events in the relations between Britain and Russia, concerning Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet after the 1907 entente. This relation was very complex in nature since Russia was pushing forward to broaden its empire and influence, fact that directly affected British interest in the zone, always thinking in India. So by using those "buffer" states Britain was able to contain Russia advances to a certain limit, in particular Persia that become of major strategic importance for Britain because of its oil resources. It is obvious then, that the entente didn't finish the game, it was just the best way for both empires to conduct their policies in Central Asia at the time, a fragile understanding but mostly peaceful and only finished by the Great War in Europe. All in all, a great book.

Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia won the 2003 Barbara Jelavich Book Prize awarded annually for the most distinguished monograph published on any aspect of Southeast European or Habsburg studies since 1600, or nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ottoman or Russian diplomatic history.

The book prize selection committee wrote the following about this book:

Possibly the most significant contribution to Russian diplomatic history in a decade, Siegel's work richly deserves the Barbara Jelavich Book Prize. Endgame revises our understanding of the dynamics of Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia, the struggle better known to its contemporaries as the Great Game. Historians traditionally believed that this Victorian Cold War ended with the Convention of 1907, as the erstwhile adversaries now joined to face the spectre of rising German power during the years leading up to the First World War.

Based on meticulous work in Russian and British archives, Siegel effectively disproves this teleological approach to early 20th century international relations. Instead, she demonstrates that the Great Game's final round came after the 1907 Convention, only to conclude as the guns of August began to sound in 1914. In the best tradition of diplomatic history, Endgame also has considerable relevance for the present by shedding light on a region that, while largely sidelined in the literature, has sadly reclaimed a central place in the news. Written with panache and confidence, Endgame is a pleasure to read.

This book reveals much to anyone who is interested in the relationship between Britain and Russia in the pre First World War period.

It focusses on the power struggle for Central Asia, an area of the world which, particularly today, is the arena for some of the most complex and important questions of international security. This work provides fascinating background to a key historical period in a region which has been so analysed in recent months.

It is obviously the result of detailed research into archives, only recently opened to the West, some of which I believe may shortly be closed once again for many years to allow renovations to take place. I can only take my hat off to Dr Siegel, for enduring what must have been many cold months in Russia, combing the various archives to produce such a detailed work.

A fascinating and thoroughly absorbing book by Dr Siegel, whose next work I await with eager anticipation.

Nobel Prize recipient Elias Canetti defined the "concentration" of a secret as the ratio between the number of people who know it, and the number of people it might affect. Canetti noted that modern technical secrets were the most concentrated type of secret because they have the potential to affect everyone, but are known only to a few.

Engineering Communism is about concentrated secrets, and the ties shared secrets create between people who hold them. More particularly, the book is about one of the most successful espionage rings to operate in the U.S., and the U.S.S.R, during the 20th century; how Communism provided meaning, purpose, identity, power, and hope for a small group of people (some still living); and how they managed to continue to Believe once that utopian dream faded for almost everyone else.

One secret I shouldn't keep is that I've known the author for many years, and read early drafts of the book. I was relieved to see it come out so well, as having a secret opinion about the work of a friend can be uncomfortable. There's a video of a talk by the author about the book at
http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?id=1128992115

A wonderfully written, exciting, unbelievable but true story that keeps your attention with new developments on every page. Imagine a defector hunted by the FBI who creates a new life in the Soviet bloc, learns the language, marries, rises to the top in his professional field, and 40 years later returns to the US. What was his life like for the 40 years behind the Iron Curtain? Why did he spy and defect? Imagine a woman who abandons her husband and children for a lover and defects with him, not knowing that she will not be able to return to her kids for decades, and then she reunites with them. This books combines elements of a spy thriller, a historical documentary, and a romantic novel, covering a variety of topics, from the roots of communist ideology among Americans and the history of computer and weapons development, to a spy's personal life that involved a Russian mistress and a Czech wife. This book shows life in Russia during the Cold War from the perspective of American communists. Well-researched and thoroughly documented, I think this book would make a great movie.

This book may be one of the most important, if under-appreciated, contributions to Cold War literature. It deserves wide readership. The book breaks vital new ground, thanks to Usdin's talents as a reporter, and provides elemental clarity, thanks to his skill as a writer, to the larger drama of espionage and technological competition between the US and USSR.

Usdin's writing and reporting are both of the highest possible standard.

This compelling story is set first in the mephitic atmosphere of the Brooklyn shtetls of the 1930s, where the bacillus of communist ideology was able to grow, then moving on to the grievance-fueled hothouse of CCNY. When you think of Julius Rosenberg, Greenglass, Sobell, these were men of little talent, who perfectly fit Stalin's description of "useful idiots". But, Barr and Salant -- the two men profiled in Usdin's book -- were clearly of far higher caliber, and so able to do far greater damage to US security. Radars, fire-control mechanisms and proximity fuses aren't as sexy as atomic bombs, but they arguably did more to tilt the balance of terror towards the Soviets during the 1950s.

The two American-born Soviet spies were able, through treachery, to truly alter the course of Cold War history. And yet, as the book discloses, they escaped punishment - not just of the judicial sort, but from within, freed of any guilt for having helped sustain a system that mutilated the lives of so many millions of people.