No comments about RUSSIA.

1 comments about Little Tenement on the Volga.

1. If you want a glimpse of post-Soviet Russia, this is the author's experience living in one of thousands of tenements in a former factory town on the Volga river. Excellent insight and cultural perspective.

No comments about Notes upon Russia: Being a Translation of the Earliest Account of that Country. Volume 1.

No comments about Notes upon Russia: Being a Translation of the Earliest Account of that Country. Volume 2.

2 comments about The big Red train ride.

1. Another adventure with the Newbys find Eric and Wanda hurtling through Brezhnev's Russia on the famous Trans-Siberian railway. From collective farms to asylums, the Newby's take you along with them on their tour.

   Part endurance challenge, part history lesson the book does suffer in part by capturing Russia at its worst: food shortages, restricted travel, stern officials and windows that won't open! But the Newby's accept it all with relatively good humour and like all their adventures, they manage to find lots of interesting characters along the route. I've always been able to think of lots of reasons NOT to visit Siberia, the trans-siberian train ride might have just given me one!




2. This was my first Eric Newby book, and I was hooked. Newby and wife Wanda travel throughout the Soviet Union searching hopefully (and often in vain) for a decent meal, a warm blanket, and helpful railroad staff. They never really succeed, but the journey they bring us along on is worth the trouble. It's just plain funny. Newby doesn't lob jokes at the reader, but tosses them off underhand for the most part, so the humor creeps up on you. He knows how to go for the bellylaugh, but most of the book has a dryer touch. Newby doesn't go for cheap shots, he's not mean spirited in the least, but his semi-sympathetic, long-suffering, and sometimes hung-over take on exploring the side roads of Russia is addictive fun. I have now followed eric and Wanda on many journeys and am still enthralled. Discovering an unread Newby is like getting a surprise birthday gift. The only reason I give it four stars instead of five, is that I think Jane Austen is a five star writer. Shakespeare merits five. Except for a limited pantheon, everyone else should get three or fewer stars, but I don't want to discourage anyone from Mr. Newby's work. It's a great read and a great introduction into the further adventures of Eric and Wanda.

No comments about Randy Black's Favorite Tales from Siberia.

No comments about Berkeley Guides: Eastern Europe: On the Loose, On the Cheap, Off the Beaten Path (1996).

4 comments about Russia in Space: The Failed Frontier?.

1. For those who think that NASA is the only way to go into space, read this excellent book, and you will see that the Soviets, and now Russia, really have an incredible history, and a bright future ahead, providing they can cope with their financial problems. The quality and imagination of the russian space program is incredible, and it would be a invaluable loss if it had to collapse completely... because it may very well be this program that will get us out of our craddle.



2. Brian Harvey has clearly done a tremendous amount of research to create "Russia in Space - The Failed Frontier?"
   
   It does a great job of covering the manned, unmanned, military, and civilian space operations in the Soviet Union and Russian programs.
   
   This is not a light read. It is more of an academic work with great detail on costs, system capabilities, and history.
   
   There is a lot of detail on how the program changed when the USSR dissolved.



3. For Americans, brought up on NASA's many successful exploits, this book gives a useful different perspective. Much of the narrative details the Soviet space achievements during the Cold War. And indeed, there were many notable firsts. From Sputnik to Vostok, Gagarin to Tereshkova, the Soviets made impressive strides. But Harvey shows that they also had their share of failures. From unmanned probes that got lost, to cosmonauts who perished.
   
   Comparing the Russian and American space programs, you can see how the former played to their strengths. By emphasising massive launch capability (like the Proton and Energiya rockets) and a can-do attitude necessitated by small budgets, especially after the end of the Cold War. Arguably, the Americans had the most advanced vehicle, in the form of the Space Shuttles. But scarcely perfect, given 2 that were destroyed, and the lengthy regular maintenance costs even when matters were routine. The book also shows the deep experience of prolonged spaceflight that the Russians amassed, via their space station. Something the Americans largely gave up after Skylab was abandoned.



4. This is a rather technical book aimed at Soviet space-age hardware. Looking at it another way, it's the history of their space program told through the equipment involved, not the people. I found it an interesting read. You can easily skip around from one topic to another without loss of continuity if you want to learn about the Soviet version of the space shuttle one day or Mir the next. I found it to be accurate and clearly-written.

5 comments about Reeling In Russia: An American Angler In Russia.

1. I do a fair amount of work in Russia, so I was interested in Reeling in Russia to deepen my understanding of this complex country. Essentially a travel diary, this book provides a very personal view of the author's fishing trip through Russia, remarkably made almost exclusively by land and water. Given his fluency in Russian and his laid-back--bordering on reckless--approach to travel planning, Montaigne's book provides a fascinating and truly unique view of Russia in 1996. This approach, however, is also the book's weakness. Montaigne's encounters are wonderful to read in and of themselves, but they rarely add up to more than snapshots of a point in time. Montaigne's journalistic background prevails as he recounts the here and now (actually the then and there in '96) without fleshing things out into a more enduring book. So if you're looking for an analysis or current history of Russia's transition out of the Soviet period, you will probably not be satisfied with this book. Otherwise, I do recommend Reeling in Russia for those seeking a tale of adventures crossing the chaos and desolation of 'early post-Soviet Russia', in meeting some of the human faces of this extraordinary culture, or simply for fans of this diary style of travel writing.



2. Author managed to convince his wife, Russia and an editor that he was writing a book on fly fishing by going across the Russian steppe from West to East meeting with local fly fishermen and trading tips.
   However finding out there was a grand total of about 150 fly fishermen across a nation of 200 million people he started to write about the actual experiences of meeting and finding these people and the conditions they lived in.
   A great look at modern life in Russia, continually amazed that everyone operated under fog of an alcoholic haze that permeated everyone.



3. This book is a travel journal that takes us through the far corners of rural Russia, from Murmansk to Kamchatka. Montaigne's fly-fishing hobby takes him well off the beaten path, to explore the wilds of the backwoods and streams. Along the way, of course, he must pass through small towns and stay with friends and acquaintances in tiny villages. Most of the text is a very vivid, journalistic description of conditions in small town Russia and Siberia today, almost 10 years after the fall of Communism. His analyses of conditions on the ground are comparable to those of other travel-journalists, such as Robert Kaplan. However, he visits places that are unknown for even people like Kaplan, since he avoids the big cities altogether. What struck me while reading this book was how much backwoods Russia is a poor, developing country, with no running water or functioning government services. This makes aspects of Montaigne's travel journal quite comparable to those of writers visiting Nepal or India. Yet, one rarely reads of travel adventures in a European Third World, making this book very unique.

   All of the prose is not about people and their problems, however, since this is after all, a fishing trip. Montaigne does an admirable job of describing his efforts at fly fishing. Through reading this book, I began to get an inkling for the first time of what the sport of fly fishing is all about. I'm much more interested in culture and travel than fishing, but Montaigne's fishing episodes were written well enough to hold my interest. On the other hand, serious fly fishing enthusiasts may be looking for more about fish than this book provides.




4. The author crosses 14 time zones searching for the perfect place to practice his fly fishing hobby. Traveling off the beaten path, he encounters and effectively describes life in post-Soviet Russia. Poverty, lethargy, crime, and an occaisional instance of hope for the future. An easy, sometimes humorous read.



5. travels with a russian speaking american who takes off solo on a cross country adventure in search of salmon, and the likes, which gives us a look at not only the fishing but also a little history and a look at the dark side of this truly grand country. where it was, some of the issues it is facing, and lots of working folks who are trying to survive and prosper -- all this while fishing in some super interesting places.

1 comments about Down the Volga: A Journey Through Mother Russia in a Time of Troubles.

1. I read this book while traveling in Russia in 2003. The book covers the changes occuring almost fifteen years prior, when the Soviet Union first experienced the pangs of perestroika. The author envelopes this political time around a journey among friends in an ill-begotten retired Russian navy ship. At all times, the author's trip is threatened by Russia's almost complete lack of amenities for tourism and by frequent document checkers. I found that this echoed my journey, even today: Russia still does not have the kind of facilities for travel that might be found in a place like Guatemala or the Czech Republic, and it operates on a system of negotiated justice.

   I value the ability of this book to quicky distill a sense of Russian history in a short and breezy tone. This will not replace reading Pushkin and some of the great tomes on the history of the Tsars. It will put some context into how people got by in the era of the Soviet Union. I really enjoyed his explanation of "blat," the Russian term for the currency of favor granting.

   The choice of the Volga as a subject for a journey into the consciousness of Russia is also appropriate. The author, although a Canadian, explains that the Volga serves to Russia as does the Mississippi in the United States. It is the heartland river that carries freight, serving industry up and down its banks. If fast changes take place in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kiev, then they may not reach the burgs of Samara, Kazan, and Volgograd. In my brief trip, I would offer my opinion that even now the evidence of change in Russia has only occurred in its cosmopolitan cities. The Russian countryside remains an ananchronism. I didn't see roads, cars, or even many advertisements to suggest that life in villages linked very much with the outside world.

   A subtext in this book is a frequent discussion of where and how the Soviet abuse of the environment can be witnessed in Russia. The author explains how the Soviets have turned the Volga into a series of linked pools through dams. One benefit of this plan is that the Volga, which formally swelled many miles during the rainy season, now no longer threatens to flood cities along its path intermittently. Some of the cities on his journey have actually been built almost seven miles inland from the current banks of the river. In Volgograd, formerly known as Stalingrad, the author speaks with a group of industrial workers who want to put air quality on the agenda of bargaining issues. In the upper Volga, the author comes across a group of vacationing ex-firefighters from Chernobyl. In Samara, the author lists the ways that the Lada plant has made the city wretched.

   This is a worthy book for educating those new to Russia about its historical context. It will bring across a lot to the reader in a quickly understood manner.