No comments about All the Russias: Travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and central Asia.

No comments about A Short History of Russia.

5 comments about REINDEER PEOPLE.

1. For someone who has only traveled so far as a few hundred miles in a sedan, my world is mind-numbingly small. Logistically, I rely on MapQuest to get me from "Point A" to "Point B"... and hopefully back in one piece. Without truly comprehending the land and life enveloping me in a "rural-suburban" town located somewhere in the cesspool of Bowash, I sorely needed a wake-up call to the raw emotion and spirit that has been inherently ingrained in the Eveny people, their reindeer, and their relationship to the expanses of Sakhan Siberia. As Vitebsky relives such experiences in The Reindeer People, his strikingly vivid account of living side-by-side with the Eveny not only intrigues, but brings to light the troubles faced by indigenous people that have been perpetuated by the Soviet era as well as its horrendous aftermath. Vitebsky's tale of the inevitable downfall of what was once a pristine way of life for these people offers a poignantly bittersweet glimpse of what is becoming all but history. Without a doubt, this is one of the greatest books to come my way in a long time!



2. I learned here that Reindeer herding for the commercial meat market has been a staple of Artic communities throughout the 20th Century (hence the effort to translpant it to Alaska in the 1920s).
   
   This is an amazing story of a British anthropologist's 25+ years visiting and documenting the life of some of the last indigenous Siberian people to herd domestic reindeer. We meet many keenly individual men women and children, from the university-trained to the descendants of shamans. I was reminded of the Mongul family in the documenary movie "The Weeping Camel," and of Amundson's antarctic expeditions, which used native skills while Scott died using modern mechanical aids. We learn what it was like to live under Soviet rule (when labor camps drove the meat markets); we watch Perestroika as it affects both animals and people, and we witness the region's disastrous ecological and economic decline under Putin's Russia.



3. Fascinating historical and factual account of the animal itself but more over, an incredible view of how they have influenced the social evolution of a huge part of the world. Very informative. Affords the reader a rare glimpse into a world (mostly Siberia) that so few us have any comprehension of.



4. My son is a history major at college and needed this book for class. The price was affordable and a book he will have for many years to use in his teaching career.



5. This book is NOT like a novel it's like a textbook. You will not find this interesting unless you have a liking to caribou.

No comments about Live from Moscow.

1 comments about In the Communist Mirror: Journeys in Eastern Europe.

1. This is a good example of travel literature at it's best. Lesley Chamberlain says that she set out to record her impressions of the eastern bloc. Because she is highly educated and intelligent, we are presented with a series of sensitive portraits of ways of life behind the Iron Curtain in the 80's, and an attempt to discern the effects of living under an overly repressive police states. But she also tracks the different "personalities" of each Communist state, bringing out the fact that each adapted itself in a slightly different way to the political system imposed upon them by Moscow. What emerges is an interesting portrait of, in her own words, "a way of life that has passed overnight into history."

No comments about Moscow Investmemt and Business Guide.

No comments about Early voyages and travels to Russia and Persia, by Anthony Jenkinson and other Englishmen: With some account of the first intercourse of the English with ... by the Hakluyt Society, 1st ser., no. 72-73).

No comments about Russia Under The Great Shadow.

No comments about Reindeer, dogs, and snow-shoes (Russia observed).

No comments about The World in Miniature. Russia: Being a Description of the Character, Manners, Customs, Dress, Diversions, and Other Peculiarities of the Different Nations, Inhabiting the Russian Empire. Volume 4.