Photography, food and spies comprise this week's Three Best Reads. We travel to Vilnius, Brooklyn, and Washington, DC, to consider wagging tongues, boiled tongues, and an overlooked photographer.

The disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg remains just that. But need it be?

Every revolution needs its myths. The faithful must 
be inspired; successive generations must be enthused. 
We explore some myths about the “Great October Revolution” that persist even now, 100 years later.

The recent controversy about a new film on the last tsar and the ballerina Mathilde Kschessinskaya is stirring up controversy well in excess of what one might expect.

All this year, in connection with the centennial of the 1917 revolutions, Calendar has offered readers a view of that year through the eyes of contemporaries. This issue we conclude the series with a look at what was going on in the pivotal months of November and December 1917.

Icons have been revered in Russia for centuries, and when it comes to miracle-working icons, pilgrims will travel thousands of kilometers to seek their divine assistance. 
We look at three you can find in Moscow.

Select images from the Children of 1917 book and film project.

A good mystery begins unexpectedly in the unlikeliest of places. And then it takes you where you never imagined. This one took the author halfway around the world and more than a hundred years back in time.

Minsk is a city built for giants. And it is where we met a great soul, Maria Fyodorovna Rylik, who dedicated her life to teaching and her family.

In which a retired Polish butcher explains how to live to be 100 and serenades us on his trumpet.

On the importance of coffee, academicians, a museum, a rooster, the harvesting of turf, and collectivization.

In which we look at the events of 1917 through the words and works of the politicians, artists, and luminaries living through them.