Russia Books - Page 6

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Svetlana Alexievich

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Nonsensical and Disappointing 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

After the excellent reviews I read on Amazon, I was very excited to get this book. However, I was very disappointed, as it is stream of consciousness ramblings that often don't make any sense. To be sure, there are a few riveting excerpts throughout the book, but most of it consists of tangents unrelated to Chernobyl. I was expecting accounts of people who had witnessed the disaster and how their lives were affected afterward. It is not nearly that straightforward. Much of it is nonsensical and surreal. For example, there is a section near the beginning of the book that just has a list of quotes from the survivors, with no context. For example, "But now we're free. The harvest is rich. We live like barons." Next, "The only thing I have is a cow. I'd hand her in, if only they don't make another war. How I hate war!" followed by "Here we have the war of wars--Chernobyl!" then, "And the cuckoo is cuckooing, the magpies are chattering, roes are running. Will they reproduce--who knows? One morning, I looked out in the garden, the boars were digging..." I'm not sure if it's a misguided attempt to be poetic or dramatic, but in the end it doesn't make sense and doesn't leave much of an impression.

Editorial Review:

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occurred in Chernobyl and contaminated as much as three quarters of Europe. Voices from Chernobyl is the first book to present personal accounts of the tragedy. Journalist Svetlana Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people affected by the meltdown---from innocent citizens to firefighters to those called in to clean up the disaster---and their stories reveal the fear, anger, and uncertainty with which they still live. Comprised of interviews in monologue form, Voices from Chernobyl is a crucially important work, unforgettable in its emotional power and honesty.

Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire

David Remnick

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Shallow and sensationalist, but thorough 3 out of 5 stars.
6 of 11 people found this review helpful.

David Remnick's "Lenin's Tomb" is a book about the journalist's experiences just before and during the collapse of the USSR at the end of the 1980s. Using a chronological overview, Remnick describes what the Soviet Union was like under the reign of Gorbachov (or "Gorbachev" in US spelling) and his views on the various leaders, journalists, KGB officers, bureaucrats, dissidents and so on.

Because Remnick goes almost entirely by interviews for his information, the book gives a very thorough biographical view of the times, but there is very little information on the general state of the country, economic and social causes for the collapse, and so on. Remnick's tone and style are very much like those of a tabloid investigative journalist, describing people and events mostly by way of the author's opinions and what the people he interviews look and act like. This has the benefit of giving one the impression of re-living the interactions with the famous of those years, but is far too shallow for any explanatory purpose.

Additionally, Remnick has too obvious favorites among the people involved. Gorbachov is generally shown more negatively than often in the West, but that fits the overall negative appraisal given to him in Russia. But people like Yeltsin and Solzhenitsyn are praised endlessly and can practically do no wrong, even though there are serious issues with both. Sakharov in particular is elevated literally to the level of a modern saint by Remnick: he is never mentioned without describing his "saintliness", "superior morality", and so on. Now in many of the cases Remnick's qualifications of his interviewees seem deserved, but it does get annoying after a while. Better to let readers decide whom they like than to pre-ordain all this.

Overall, the book is mostly useful as a collection of interviews of important people at the end of the 1980s, and as such it is very balanced in the kind of people interviewed. It fails entirely as anything more though, and should not be used as a serious explanatory book on the hows and whys of the USSR's collapse. And that is somewhat disappointing.

Editorial Review:

"...the most eloquent chronicle of the Soviet empire's demise." --Washington Post Book World

"...an extraordinary confluence of observation, hard work, knowledge, and reflection; a better book by a journalist on the withdrawing roar of the Soviet Union is hard to imagine." --The New York Times Book Review

Leningrad: State of Siege

Michael Jones

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“All offers of surrender from Leningrad must be rejected,” wrote Adolph Hitler on September 29, 1941, at the outset of Operation Barbarossa. “In this struggle for survival, we have no interest in keeping even a proportion of the city’s population alive.”

During the famed 900-day siege of Leningrad, the German High Command deliberately planned to eradicate the city’s population through starvation. Viewing the Slavs as sub-human, Hitler embarked on a vicious program of ethnic cleansing. By the time the siege ended in January 1944, almost a million people had died. Those who survived would be marked permanently by what they endured as the city descended into chaos.

In Leningrad, military historian Michael Jones chronicles the human story of this epic siege. Drawing on newly available eyewitness accounts and diaries, he reveals the true horrors of the ordeal—including stories long-suppressed by the Soviets of looting, criminal gangs, and cannibalism. But he also shows the immense psychological resources on which the citizens of Leningrad drew to survive against desperate odds. At the height of the siege, for instance, an extraordinary live performance of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony profoundly strengthened the city’s will to resist.

A riveting account of one of the most harrowing sieges of world history, Leningrad also portrays the astonishing power of the human will in the face of even the direst catastrophe.

Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961-1965 (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of S)

Francis French, Colin Burgess

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

It was a time of bold new technology, historic moments, and international jousting on the final frontier. But it was also a time of human drama, of moments less public but no less dramatic in the lives of those who made the golden age of space flight happen. These are the moments and the lives that Into That Silent Sea captures, a book that tells the intimate stories of the men and women, American and Russian, who made the space race their own and gave the era its compelling character. These pages chronicle a varied and riveting cavalcade of human stories, including a look at Yuri Gagarin’s harrowing childhood in war-ravaged Russia and Alan Shepard’s firm purchase on the American dream. It also examines the controversial career of cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, and the remarkable struggle and ultimate disappointment of her American counterparts. It tries to uncover the truth behind the allegations that shadowed Gus Grissom and Scott Carpenter and then allows the reader to share the heart-stopping suspense of Alexei Leonov’s near-fatal first space walk. Through dozens of interviews and access to Russian and American official documents and family records, the authors bring to life the experiences that shaped the lives of the first astronauts and cosmonauts and forever changed their world and ours. For more information about the series, visit www.outwardodyssey.com.

(20060427)

Red Star Rogue: The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S.

Kenneth Sewell, Clint Richmond

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Farce 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

What a joke. Two wannabe authors make up some fiction based on John Craven's own wonderful ability to invent things in his head. There is no basis for any of this conjecture. The title is nuts. Who is the rogue?? Why does a tragic accident that takes down an sub and her brave crew get labeled a rogue?? Because why?? A fantasy?? Does anyone believe this 'sea story'???? A true sad waste of paper?? Not to mention very disrespectful of the professionals who went down with their ship.

Best, pb

Editorial Review:

March 7, 1968: Several hundred miles northwest of Hawaii, the nuclear-armed K-129 surfaces and then sinks; all of its crewmen and officers perish at sea. Who was commanding the rogue Russian sub? What was its target? How did it infiltrate American waters undetected? Navy veteran Kenneth Sewell, drawing from newly declassified documents and extensive confidential interviews, exposes the stunning truth behind an operation calculated to provoke war between the U.S. and China -- a nightmare scenario averted by only seconds. In full, authoritative detail, Red Star Rogue illuminates this history-shaping event -- and rings with chilling relevance in light of today's terrorist threat.

Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy

Anna Politkovskaya

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Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A searing portrait of a country in disarray, and of the man at its helm, from “the bravest of journalists” (The New York Times) Hailed as “a lone voice crying out in a moral wilderness” (New Statesman), Anna Politkovskaya made her name with her fearless reporting on the war in Chechnya. Now she turns her steely gaze on the multiple threats to Russian stability, among them President Putin himself.
Putin’s Russia depicts a far-reaching state of decay. Politkovskaya describes an army in which soldiers die from malnutrition, parents must pay bribes to recover their dead sons’ bodies, and conscripts are even hired out as slaves. She exposes rampant corruption in business, government, and the judiciary, where everything from store permits to bus routes to court appointments is for sale. And she offers a scathing condemnation of the ongoing war in Chechnya, where kidnappings, extrajudicial killings, rape, and torture are begetting terrorism rather than fighting it.
Sounding an urgent alarm, Putin’s Russia is both a gripping portrayal of a country in crisis and the testament of a great and intrepid reporter.

Russia ABCs: A Book About the People and Places of Russia (Country Abcs)

Berge, Ann

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Varied information in an alphabet setting 4 out of 5 stars.
17 of 25 people found this review helpful.

Frankly, I was amazed at the variety and amount of information that is presented in "Russia ABCs," a children's information book.

On the first page of the text, the reader learns:
Privyet! (pree-VYET)--hi in Russian
Russia is the biggest country in the world, crossing two continents, Europe and Asia.
Almost 145 million people live in Russia, 8th in world population.
The eastern edge is only 51 miles from Alaska.
Plus a map showing Russia's size, with an inset showing Russia's place on the globe)

A is for alphabet: the Cyrillic, named after one of two monks who invented it in the 800s.
B is for ballet, for which Russia is famous.
D is for doll, the hand-painted wooden nesting dolls called matryoshkas.
G is for Grandfather Frost who comes on New Year's Day, bearing gifts.
J is for the jeweled eggs created by Peter Carl Faberge for the czars.
L is for Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world, home to 2000 kinds of plants and animals, half of which are found nowhere else.
M is for Moscow, home to 8 million people, most of whom live in tiny apartments with one bathroom and one or two other rooms.
N is for nerpa, a kind of seal that lives on Lake Baikal, and the only seal that lives in fresh water.
R is for ruble, Russia's monetary unit.
T is for taiga, a huge forested region that stretches across northern Russia and filled with spruce and pines.
V is for Vladivostok, an important port city and the last stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway. The ride takes six or seven days to complete.
X is for exports, with Russia being the second greatest exporter of oil.
Z is for time zones. Russia is so huge that it spans eleven out of the 24 time zones.

This is remarkably informative for a children's ABC book. It definitely belongs in a school library to enhance country studies. Look at how much you learned just from the review, which is just a skeletal look at the contents. My only reservation pertains to the illustrations. Some are really nice, but others look traced. That's the reason for the deducted star. Still--a nice recommendation.

Editorial Review:

Russia ABCs Book

Sculpting in Time: Tarkovsky The Great Russian Filmaker Discusses His Art

Andrey Tarkovsky

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Cinema as an Art form 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

"Sculpting in Time" is truly an amazing work of art in its own right. Certainly filmmakers have written books about their artistic styles in the past. Philosophers have written elaborately on the subject of aesthetics as a whole in the past as well. And yet "Sculpting in Time" offers those with aesthetic interests something truly unique.

It should be forewarned that Tarkovsky, like Ingmar Bergman, was heavily interested in aesthetic philosophy. In fact Tarkovsky's ideas regarding art borderline the metaphysical (as this book is often used in higher level philosophy classes), and yet - through the tone in which the book is written - "Sculpting in Time" manages to appeal to the average Tarkovsky or cinema studies fan in such a way that no other aesthetics book has managed.

Tarkovsky's self-written "Sculpting in Time" is an amazing supplement which describes the brilliant filmmaker's use of filmic techniques but also goes a step further by explaining (at great length), why the filmmaker believes those techniques are significant. The value of his tried efforts to create a meaningful work of art directly relate to Tarkovsky's view of art as a whole.

Tarkovsky's views of art are complex and yet are reiterated for the reader so simply they stand out in "Sculpting in Time" like a gem. For instance the underlying theme in Tarkovsky's writing is the idea of an "absolute truth" of art which can be derived a given piece of art. Without giving too much away, Tarkovsky's beliefs, as expressed in his chapter "Imprinted in Time" mostly, is simply that art done for the right reasons - containing some form of objective truth within it - serves to link us (subjective beings), with an "absolute." From that blooms Tarkovsky's entire creative aspect fans of his films know and love him for.

I have to recommend this book to anyone interested in aesthetics, cinema studies, or Tarkovsky. I think this is a nice supplement to have when watching Tarkovsky films as well, so it might just serve to spark the interest in a philosophy buff to check out a few Tarkovsky films! Enjoy!

Editorial Review:

Hailed by Ingmar Bergman as "the most important director of our time," Andrey Tarkovsky here reveals the original inspirations for his extraordinary films

Moscow & St. Petersburg 1900-1920: Art, Life, & Culture of the Russian Silver Age

John E. Bowlt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Lavishly illustrated, Moscow & St. Petersburg 1900–1920 is the quintessential guide to Russia’s vibrant and influential Silver Age.

In this elegantly written narrative survey, John E. Bowlt sheds new light on Russia’s Silver Age, the period of artistic renaissance that flourished as Imperial Russia’s power waned. Much of the creative energy could be attributed to the Symbolist movement, whose proponents sought to transcend the barriers of bourgeois civility and whose unconventional lifestyles led some critics to label them Decadents and Degenerates. But, as Sergei Diaghilev declared, theirs was not a moral or artistic decline, but a voyage of inner discovery and a reinvention of a national culture.

Bowlt’s richly textured volume focuses not only on Russia’s best known artists from this period—Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, Igor Stravinsky, Anna Pavlova and poet Anna Akhmatova—but also on lesser known movements of the period—experimental theater, Nikolai Kalmakov’s innovative painting, and the free dance practiced by followers of Duncan and Dalcroze.

The Romanovs: the Final Chapter

Robert K. Massie

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Total reviews: 42 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"MASTERFUL."
--The Washington Post Book World
"RIVETING . . . UNFOLDS LIKE A DETECTIVE STORY."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review
In July 1991, nine skeletons were exhumed from a shallow mass grave near Ekaterinburg, Siberia, a few miles from the infamous cellar room where the last tsar and his family had been murdered seventy-three years before. But were these the bones of the Romanovs? And if these were their remains, where were the bones of the two younger Romanovs supposedly murdered with the rest of the family? Was Anna Anderson, celebrated for more than sixty years in newspapers, books, and film, really Grand Duchess Anastasia?
The Romanovs: The Final Chapter provides answers, describing in suspenseful detail the dramatic efforts in post-Communist Russia to discover the truth. This unique story, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie, presents a colorful panorama of contemporary characters, illuminating the major scientific dispute between Russian experts and a team of Americans, including Drs. William Maples and Michael Baden--fiercely antagonistic forensic experts whose findings, along with those of DNA scientists from Russia, America, and Great Britain, all contributed to solving one of the greatest mysteries of the twentieth century.
"AN ADMIRABLE SCIENTIFIC THRILLER."
--The New York Times Book Review
"COMPELLING . . . A FASCINATING ACCOUNT."
--Chicago Tribune
"A MASTERPIECE OF INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING."
--San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle