September 01, 2015 Tsars, War and Komiks Books we liked, including Dominc Lieven's "The End of Tsarist Russia," Anthony Marra's "The Tsar of Love and Techno," Denise Youngblood's "Bondarchuk's War and Peace," and Jose Alaniz's "Komiks: Comic Art in Russia."
July 01, 2015 Stalin, Mythology and Faberge Reviews of "Stalin: A New Biography of a Dictator," by Oleg Khlevniuk; "The Great Glass Sea", by Josh Weil; and the documentary "Faberge: A Life of its Own."
May 01, 2015 A Dangerous Woman and a Soviet Kid In which we review "A Very Dangerous Woman," by Deborah McDonald and Jeremy Dronfield; "The Complete Folktales of A.N. Afanas'ev," by Jack V. Haney; "USSR: Diary of a Perestroika Kid," by Vladimir Kozlov; "Moscow, St. Petersburg & The Golden Ring," by Masha Nordbye; and "High Society Dinners," by Yuri Lotman.
March 01, 2015 Prison, Alexis and Siberia Reviews of a book by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, "My Fellow Prisoners," "Alexis in America, by Lee Farrow, "Midnight in Siberia," by by NPR host David Greene, "Trepanation of the Skull," by Sergei Gandlevsky, and "An American Diplomat in Bolshevik Russia," by DeWitt Clinton Poole.
January 01, 2015 Two Megalomaniacs A review of two books on megalomaniacal personalities, The Baron's Cloak, by Willard Sunderland, and Limonov by Emmanuel Carrere. See our reviews section for full reviews.
November 01, 2014 Memoirs and History A review of Elena Gorokhova's memoir, Russian Tatoo, The Devil's Alliance, by Roger Moorhouse, and The Kreutzer Sonata Variations, translated by Michael Katz. Also, a look at the amazing photo album book, Soviet Ghosts, by Rebecca Litchfield.
September 01, 2014 Poets and Steam Where we review two books by and about poets, and one about banyas. All are highly recommended.
July 01, 2014 Spies, Denouncers and Gods Three books make our cut this issue, and all are about spies and infiltrators.
May 01, 2014 Putin, Lenin and Idioms A review of two timely books on Russian political and expat culture, and an update to a most important language book.
March 01, 2014 Spies and Memoirs Reviews of two nonfiction works about spies (some in Russia, one in America), and two memoirs of Russians from very different eras.
January 01, 2014 Empire and Paranoia This issue's review section considers Ben Judah's "Fragile Empire," Victor Martinovich's "Paranoia," C.P. Lesley's "The Golden Lynx," and Olga Fedina's "What Every Russian Knows (And You Don't)."
November 01, 2013 Baba Yagas, Kremlin and Cooks A review of two books on Baba Yaga, one on the Kremlin, and one on Soviet cuisine and memoir. Also brief reviews of two movies and three other books on everything from Lee Harvey Oswald to emigres in Paris.