5 comments about The Chess Artist: Genius, Obsession, and the World's Oldest Game.

1. The Chess Artist contains some interesting observations about the game, and the occasional worthwhile excursus, but it never quite closes in on an interesting story. This may be because so much of it is built on intentionally arbitrary encounters, events seemly engineered to generate something to write about (e.g. chess games played in prisons, or among a museum's Duchamp collection). I enjoyed it, and I learned something, but I had hoped for more.



2. Chess players can be very intriguing. At the highest levels, it is difficult to imagine what they go through and why they do it. It is a competitive obsession.
   The reader is led through the world of a competitive chess player with some great insights of the motivation and culture in which a chess player immerses himself/herself.



3. The Chess Artist was a bit boring to me. I found the main characters Glenn and the author very interesting. I found the telling of their exploits in America and the minor characters that they encounter in America very interesting. However, most of the story takes place in Kalmakia, Russia, and this did not keep my interest at all. In general, the writing is very good, so I may come back to this book at a later date.



4. The Chess Artist was a bit boring for me. I found the main characters in the book, Glenn Umstead and the author very intriguing. This book is really a diary of chess adventures of these two men. I found the telling of their exploits in America and the minor characters that they encounter in America very interesting. However, most of the story takes place in Kalmakya, Russia, and this did not keep my interest at all. So most of the book is pretty boring. In general, the writing is very good, so I may come back to this book at a later date.



5. Time saver tip: only read this review if you have read at least 5 reviews already.
   
   At the time of writing my review, there are 34 reviews already in, and the average rating is 4 stars. I don't need to tell you what you will find in the book (the facts and topics that it covers), since it's all out there, quite accurately. Therefore, I will only give you a few points that may only make sense after you have read a number of reviews.
   
   I think the review that, as of this writing, is featured at the top of the list, by T. K. Kenyon, got it exactly right: this book is about obsession/addiction, and it's all about the journey. Hallman masters description (from people to landscapes to subcultures) and mood (his journey through the world of chess goes through many stages and he shares how the journey affected and changed him). Absolutely refreshing, a continuous invitation to keep reading.
   
   This book's subject matter, therefore, is not chess. The subject matter is, again, obsession (the word is even in the title of the book). Those reviewers that note aspects of chess not covered by the book as if these were flaws didn't get it. They approached the book with specific expectations. The book is not a chess treatise. It does not have to cover all aspects of chess. What would be the point, for example, in having the book covering the international chess scene if, as all reviewers noted, Glenn Umstead cannot compete at that level?
   
   I am a chess player myself, but not even close to the level of obsession personified by Glenn Umstead--not now, anyway. My journey through the world of chess had ups and downs. As another reviewer put it, Hallman has a love/hate relationship with the game. Put me in the same camp. I almost felt like the book had been written exclusively for me. Hallman takes you on a journey through the glory and darkness of chess. No wonder chess lovers liked the book a lot less than nonchess players! They don't want to see the (many) unpleasantries.
   
   In just a few years, it seems that Hallman was able to grasp, and put in print, all the feelings that the game can generate. Who cares that he didn't solve a murder mystery in Kalmykia? That part of the book is about exploration, frustration, and pushing it like a madman. Hallman is not a chess master, but obsession is quite contagious.

No comments about St. Petersburg (Insight City Guides).

5 comments about Lonely Planet Estonia Latvia & Lithuania (Lonely Planet Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania).

1. The authors managed to stuff everything you need to know in a relatively small book. I have been in the Baltics three times and know Latvia quite well, but this book will enrich my next trip (the relatives and locals can only do so much).
   I recommed it.



2. As usual, Lonely Planet guides give the most detailed information on the "nuts and bolts" of travel (bus and train instructions, locations and practicalities.) We found this particularly useful in a region where we did not share a common language with the people.
   
   However, tourism to the Baltic region boomed in 2004 with these countries' entry into the EU, making the book's hotel listings completely inadequate. I don't fault the authors/editors for not anticipating the boom, but rather comment that, for example, with only 3000 hotel rooms in Vilnius a guidebook now needs to list a lot more hotles so visitors can hope to get one of those now-coveted rooms!
   
   The other drawback of this book is common to most other Lonely Planet titles: the information on cities, buildings, monuments, etc., is very dry (lacks color) and is overly terse. For such information, I have come to enjoy Rough Guides which usually include enjoyable walking tours of the major tourist areas.



3. I found the Lonely Planet Estonia Latvia & Lithuania book very helpful on my first trip to Lithuania. Six women traveling, we felt very safe, the maps were well written and made our daily planning easy. Time distances on the bus were accurate. Information on customs made us feel more at ease. We looked for relatives because my grandmother left Lithuania 100 years ago and found them. A bus trip to the city she was from, visiting the Tourist Information Center(as was listed in the book), an English speaking person in the office and we asked for a phone book which listed two phone numbers with my grandmother's last name. Wow, thank you Lonely Planet.



4. The book I purchased was delivered to my house in great condition. It was if I had just bought the book at a book store.



5. I generally love Lonely Planet books, so was a bit disappointed with this one. It's good as a quick reference guide, but nothing much more. It doesn't have very much background or history about some of the area's most important places. If you're going to buy only one book before traveling to the Baltics, choose the Rough Guide instead - we ended up using it almost exclusively towards then end of our trip. Also, the hotels/accommodations selection in this edition is very poor.

1 comments about A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire (Penguin Great Journeys).

1. Anton Chekhov never sat down and wrote a discrete book titled A JOURNEY TO THE FAR END OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE, but he did take an eventful journey from Moscow to the island of Sakhalin, the eastern most reach of the empire, in 1890, which he recorded in letters to family and friends and in the report he was commissioned to write regarding the island settlement. Penguin editors have excerpted the letters to describe Chekhov's journey to his destination and draw on the report for what he found at his destination. Together, these parts create a satisfying, often astonishing travelogue and social statement.
   
   Chekhov left Moscow in April and the letters begin with his arrival a month later in Tomsk, on the western side of Asiatic (Siberian) Russia. The letters are full of the humor, insights, wonder and conventions that are prized in the genre. Chekhov's narrative voice is addictive. It becomes clear that the route he follows, first by land and then by boat on the Amur, the river that borders China, that late 19th century Asiatic Russia had more than a little in common with the American Wild West of the same period. The Russians pushed eastward usurping land and natural resources from native tribes. Sakhalin, a long desolate island north of Japan, was taken for penal colonies and its coal deposits. In his report, Chekhov ehcoes Dickens and presages Orwell as he considers the condition of the prisoners, those who imprison them and the native Gilyaks. It is an incredible statement about humanity and inhumanity in an inhospitable place far from civilization.

3 comments about Motherland.

1. A friend sent me a copy of "Motherland" as a gift, knowing that I had spent eight years in Russia prior to returning to a more predictable, "normal" (boring) suburban American life two years ago. I have not been back to Russia, since, though my wife is Russian, and two of our children were born there. As time passes, memories of the Russia I became a part of begin to fade; images of the people I met and places I visited begin to blur. But what time and a failing memory have taken away, Simon Roberts' "Motherland" has helped to restore.
   
   Russia is not as tragic or desparate as the nightly news would have us believe, and much of what Roberts in his travels with his wife has managed to capture is the softer, more human side of the country that would simply never make the editor's cut. While some of his photographs do capture the desparation of a country in painful, often violent transition, he also uncovers the hope and dignity of the people they encountered on their journey. The honesty he is able to coax from his subjects and onto the page is very unusual. What passes for ordinary or every-day in Russia is what for me in many ways is the real Russia, and Roberts manages masterly to capture the true essence of the country, with all its warts and beauty.
   
   Roberts and his wife spent a year traveling throughout the vast country, riding trains, mixing with locals, and going to places that ordinary tourists - or even those of us who spent most of our time in the expatriate ghetto of Moscow - would never dream of venturing. In the process, they seem to have come away with an intimate understanding - and empathy - for the people and places that make up "the other" 99% of the country. Roberts' photographs seem to be taken from the inside looking out, not the other way around. In the process, he has, for me, captured in this book the essence of what is so often referred to as the "Russian soul." It's what I miss the most.



2. This a beautiful and evocative book. The photographer really got all over the country and he really caught the essence of the Russian people. Every image is stunning and tells a story.
   
   It's got a permanent (and prominent) place on my coffee table!



3. Motherland is a fascinating insight into Russian life and people. As someone who has never been to Russia, I was particularly impressed with Roberts' accessible and open style, which allowed me to experience the surprising diversity and beauty of Russia from the comfort of home. I know that Roberts and his wife spent a year traveling across this enormous territory and their knowledge, sympathy and regard for the country really shines through. The photographs are sensitive but unsentimental, honest but never critical. For me, Roberts' Motherland opened a door onto another world; I haven't seen a better photographic representation of contemporary Russia.

5 comments about The Rough Guide to Moscow 4 (Rough Guide Travel Guides).

1. Rough Guide's book on Moscow is by far one of the best tour books I have seen for that city. Recently we had the chance to live in Moscow for two months. This book, along with the Rough Guides Russian phrase book, were our constant companions. The Moscow book was essential for giving us really indepth information about most of the sites we went to see. Also, the history section was invaluable to us as we found it necessary to do a little homeschooling of our children while there. I still refer to the history section of the Moscow book to refresh my memory on the complicated story of Russian history.

   We also had Fodor's along with us but found that we relied much more on Rough Guides as a source of important and reliable information. Rough Guides is a must if you visit Moscow.




2. 
   Unfortunately, despite the slow rise of tourists coming to Moscow, there is still no good guidebook. Taking that into consideration, I chose this over the Lonely Planet because it has more day trip information and more background.
   
   This book is truly chock full of information. However, it is arranged in a way that is terribly useless. Neighborhoods are listed, followed by page after page of historical detail and buildings to notice -- guaranteed to get you lost if you actually try to read as you go. My method settled into choosing a neighborhood, reading the book, going there, getting lost, coming home, then reading the book again to try to discern where I'd been.
   
   A bizarre cross section of details pepper the book: things like information on $100/month gyms for New Russians, but no useful notes on where average people can go work out. This sort of thing doesn't matter much to the tourist, but can be frustrating as someone living in Moscow.
   
   I still think this is one of the better guides out there. It does have remarkable historical coverage in a small amount of space, as well as practical details that should satisfy any shoestring or economising traveller. One can hope that further issues of the Guide are able to arrange information more helpfully.



3. I used the latest edition of this guidebook on my recent trip to Moscow (after having a great experience with the St. Petersburg version) and was shocked at how out of date the book was. Most of the restaurants that we tried from the book were closed or not at all what was described, and the prices (both for food and admission to various places) were wildly divergent from those listed in the book. While I understand that there is a lot of turnover and change among these things in Russia, this was simply unacceptable from a new edition that was released a month before my trip. Other guides that we had that were older were more accurate, so it's obvious that the authors did not really try to update this new edition before releasing it.
   
   A second criticism: this book is extremely hard to use for actually navigating the city. The book is organized by the different districts within Moscow, with maps of each area only at the beginning of each section. This means that a great deal of time is wasted trying to find the correct map to look at. It would be much easier if all of the maps were at the back of the book. More importantly, the metro map in the book is absolutely useless. In Moscow, where 2 or more metro lines meet, each line will come into a different station with its own name that will then be connected by walkways to the other station. The map in this book does not make clear which station is on which line, which can make travel a lot more confusing than it needs to be. For a more useful metro map, check out the Eyewitness travel guide, which one of my travel companions used and found to be much better.
   
   The postives: While I would not recommend that anyone use this book as their sole guide for the reasons listed above, the descriptions of the sites to see around Moscow were extremely informative. The recommendations for tour companies, including who has exclusive access to certain areas, were correct. I would rely whole-heartedly on the book's listings of what bus numbers to take to get around, as they were always accurate. Also, we did find 3 restaurants in the book that were still around, had good food, and reasonably priced: Dioskuriya (Georgian food: Nikitskiy bul. 5, str. 1 near the Arbatskaya metro, through the post office arch); Genatsvale (Georgian food: Ostozhenka ul. 12/1, near the Kropotkinskaya metro); and Karetniy Dvor (Azerbajani food: Povarskaya ul. 52, near the Barrikadnaya metro).



4. As a las vegas lawyer, i traveled to moscow many times, and I purchased this book. This book is so out of date, it is not worth the room in your luggage.



5. This book gives ou a nice overview of the region, and incredible specific tips for visiting Moscow.

5 comments about Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express: A Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov Novel.

1. (That title had more of a "ring" to it when it was the Marrakesh Express, nyet?)

   In his Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov series, Stuart M. Kaminsky has deftly transplanted the Ed McBain police procedural to Russia: individual detectives, each having his/her own serial back stories, (Zelach has a much larger piece this time than he ever has,) investigating different cases. This is all played out against a panoramic backdrop through the time span of the series: the disintegration of the former Soviet Union.

   It's not easy trying to be a force for Law and Order in a country having tenuous little of either:
   "The laws of Russia were a shambles: a basis in old Soviet law, assumptions of common sense and vague precedents, smatterings of Western manipulations gleaned from reruns of "Law and Order," "L.A. Law," "Rumpole of the Bailey," and ancient black-and-white episodes of "Perry Mason."
   The law, in short, was whatever the politically appointed and frequently corrupt judges wanted it to be. While corruption and politics pervaded the old Soviet system, there were still occasional Communist zealots on the bench who stood behind and believed in the oppressive laws in the books they seldom read.
   Now the law was written by Kafka."

   In the 14th installment of the series, the men and sole woman of the Office of Special Investigations are plunged into the Russian underground heavy metal/neo-Nazi music scene, the Moscow metro subway system, and, of course, riding the Trans-Siberian Express. Prolific author Kaminsky gives the reader a feel for the people and politics while raconting a riveting tale. Rostnikov's immediate supervisor, Igor "The Yak" Yaklovev, a former KGB functionary intent on gathering as much 'dirt" on as many people as possible, is totally devoid of human kindness - reminds this reader of Daniel Benzali's smarmy serpentine character (Robert Quinn) on "The Agency." Through it all, Rostnikov and his crew persevere - like the laborers who built the 6,000-mile Trans-Siberian Express.
   reviewed by mbmlaw




2. I'm new to Kaminsky, so all the Russian named characters living in a different world made the early going slow. By Book II, however, I was up to speed and turned onto the pace of three overlapping plots:

   1. Porfiry Rostnikov, the seasoned Moscow cop with a plastic leg, along with Sasha Tkach is on a mission on the title train in a compartment with a couple of Americans, an intriguing female agent and Pavel Cherkasov, Russia's answer to Henny Youngman. Igor (the Yak) Yaklovev is Rostnikov's Machiavellian boss. He thrives running a police department in a society that acknowledges law enforcement but has no clearly accepted laws and has his own reasons for sending them on the assignment.

   2. Rostnikov's son Iosef and partner Elena are chasing Inna, a psycho whose answer to a father's lack of attention is to plunge a kitchen knife into Moscow commuters who remind her of him.

   3. Emil Karpo another hardened police vet and his more mystical junior partner Zelach are looking for the missing lead singer in a skinhead rock band. The Naked Cossack, whose real name is Misha Lovski, is the son of a Rupert Murdoch like Moscow media mogul rebelling against his father's life.

   The investigations weave through each chapter moving toward independent but simultaneous conclusions. The drama of the chase or who did what to whom, however, is the sideshow. The real story is about how Kaminsky's characters react to what happens around them, both on and off the job. In the end it's not about justice but rather Rostnikov and the Yak manipulating each other to preserve what passes for order in their chaotic worlds. Even if you can't remember their names or identify with their lifestyles, you'll know what makes Kaminsky's characters tick and empathize with the way each plays the hand life has dealt.




3. I have never read anything by Kaminsky and solely on the basis of reader reviews, I tried this one. Alas, 'twas a fizzle. Mildly interesting but basically fluff. I'll grant you it's "clever" but in wholly predictable ways. When it comes to weaving together suspense, violence, plot twists, and insight into Mother Russia, there are others who do it much better. Kaminsky stays on the surface of the snowdrifts. It's a formula book wearing a fancy disguise with a great title that deserves better.



4. If you are a mystery fan, or a fan of interesting characters in interesting locales, you should check out Stuart Kaminsky's Russian Police series featuring Porfiri Petrovich Rostnikov.
   
   Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express is quite a good example of the series.
   
   It is well-plotted, with several interweaving story-lines all being pursued by the Special Branch, of which Rostnikov is the head cop.
   
   But, interesting as the plots are, and interesting as the insights on current-day, post-Soviet Russia are, the real charmers in this series and this book are the characters.
   
   They evolve as the series evolves, but they are never less than quirky and fascinating.
   
   Rostnikov, with his shriveled and then amputated leg, his quick but secret mind, his wide-ranging interest in many subjects, is only the start.
   
   There's Sasha Tkach, boyish and impulsive and by turns brave and bedeviled, losing his family to his taste for women and even stronger taste for danger.
   
   There's Zelach, a man of limited intelligence but paranormal intuition.
   
   There's Rostnikov's son Iosef, first a soldier, then a playwright, then a policeman, and his fiancee, Elena Timofeyeva, brilliant and tough as nails but always consumed with self-reproach.
   
   There's crazy Paulinin, the demented pathologist, who speaks to corpses and likes them better than the living.
   
   But best of all, there's Karpo, the vampire, the monk-like devotee of Communism, who, having lost his guiding ideal, and then the only woman or even person he ever felt anything for, now forges implacably ahead making up the law as he goes along.



5. Sadly this may be the last in this series, but if so, it ends with a great story, maybe the best in the series. Once again as in all the PPR novels, there are three crimes to be investigated, one by each of the 'teams'.
   
   Iosef and Elena are looking for a murderer on the Moscow Metro system. She has been attacking middle-aged men who look like mid-level bureaucrats. So far she has managed to kill four and wound two. In the last of the attacks observed by a six year old girl, a good description is gotten and Iosef goes onto the subway as a decoy, after Porfiry figures out that all the attacks have been at stations beginning with "K".
   
   Karpo and Zelach are sent out to find the "Naked Cossack" who is the lead singer in a 'skinhead' band. He is the darling of the disaffected in the Moscow underground, where people are known by names like 'Bottle Kaps' and 'Pure Knuckles'. The fear is that one of the Skinny has found out that the Cossack is the son of a wealthy Jewish family, and has kidnapped him for ransom. Once again Zelach surprises us with his knowledge of underground 'heavy metal' music and groups. But there is a problem with Karpo...the 'Vampire' is acting strangely as if his emotions are not under control.
   
   PRR and Tkach are on a mission to find a mysterious courier who is to make a swap of half a million dollars for a package. The "Yak" sends PRR and Tkach on the Trans-Siberian Express, to watch for the swap, catch the courier and recover the 'package' and money. There is a catch (as always) because there is a FSB agent on the train who is also looking for the courier; and worse yet, an assassin sent to kill the courier, and recover both the money and the package.
   
   In addition, we get an interesting lesson as to the building of the T-S Railroad, the conditions and hardships; as well as that of the city of Ekaterinaberg (Sverdlovsk under the Soviets) where the Tsar and his family were murdered and the home and power base for Boris Yeltsin.
   
   There is some fine interplay between Iosef and Elena; Porfiry and Sarah; Karpo and Zelach; Tkach's mother and her boyfriend; and Tkach and his wife Maya. Hopefully at some time Kaminsky will decide to give us one more book that will rap up the series in a nice "package" and we get to say goodbye to everyone.

No comments about Wallpaper City Guide: Moscow (Wallpaper City Guides) (Wallpaper City Guides).

5 comments about Once in Kazakhstan: The Snow Leopard Emerges.

1. Keith Rosten traveled to be a Fulbright lecturer in Kazakhstan. This former Soviet republic holds an important place in history--crossroads of the Silk Road in Central Asia, it is a mixing pot of the Far East and the easternmost reaches of Europe. The people are Asiatic and Turkic, far different than the Russians who moved in during the Soviet era. The time covered in this memoir is the early 90's, when Kazakhstan made the painful transition from Soviet republic to a nation on its own (though associated in the Russian circle.) The turmoil of ethnic conflict, monetary upheavals are well documented here.
   
   But what I really appreciated was the more personal observation about daily life. Rosten travels around Kazakhstan and reports the customs of the people in personal detail--this is the best part of the book. How much vodka to order for a party (surprise; 1 bottle per every 2 adults. Women will drink champagne...maybe.) He tries to avoid getting into drinking matches, sipping the edge of his glass and we imagine him watering the potted plants secretly now and then. The cold weather, the markets, the local cuisine (horse is on the menu) and the juxtaposition of statues of Lenin surrounded by ceremonial yurts. It's a wonderful journey and Rosten tells it simply and well. This is not only a book about recent historical events, it's a personal book--his time as a guest in a foreign land. I loved it and if you are an armchair traveler, you will want to pick this up and read it.



2. It's a rare kind of book: it provides a spatial picture of everyday life and political history of a huge country rising up for its independence, but is written mainly in short, wise stories, sometime as anecdotes. This is not a disadvantage, if we remember that a lot of classic historical works were written in this fashion - the personal view and personal feelings of the author on the events and political leaders, which fall outside any political science methodology.
   
   As somebody with Soviet life experience (childhood, youth), partly in Kazakhstan, I was interested in the foreign view and thoughts on Eurasia's biggest country, Kazakhstan. After all, there aren't that many books written by journalists about this country. (I am not sure whether historians or ethnographers wrote anything more than studies of their own narrow specific problems. General views that better fit foreigners who visit Kazakhstan or want to learn about this country.)
   
   In short, I found in it a lot of good stories on the recent life, written with humor and occasional philosophical smiles.
   
   I left the USSR about 20 years ago and visited only twice. I think I can safely say that Rosten, with his very good command of Russian and his good friends, managed to avoid many of the literary traps that strangers often fall into, when touring the former USSR environment. The reader can trust the authenticity of every small detail he mentioned in this book, and the whole book in the entirety of its atmosphere, discussion and philosophy.



3. Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I've had an interest in Central Asia and the Caucuses. In 1994, two good friends were in Kazakhstan working on privatization, and I've read the more readily available books on the area, such as Eastern Approaches and all the excellent Hopkirk volumes. Rosten's self-published diary of his time in Kazakhstan as a Fullbright scholar in 1993 is a moderately informative account of the large nation's baby steps as a modern nation. With a background as a lawyer and business school training, Rosten is well qualified to tell this tale of a country trying to sort out a legal system, elections, and a functioning economy. However, his fluency in Russian is what really allows him to mix with people at different levels of society and get the flavor of the place. For the most part, his diary is typical of books by Westerners spending a year or two abroad: the problems of finding a place to live, breakdowns in municipal services like garbage collection, hot water, heat, etc., arbitrary taxi fares, strange foods, the prevalence of vodka, transportation problems, and so forth.
   
   His coverage of the emerging nation is a little more in-depth, as the country struggles to arrange reasonable elections and constitution. All of which is intertwined with the ever-present thorny "nationalities" question, which boils down to whether ethnic Russians will get a fair shake in a Kazakh nation. This is a pretty contentious issue of course, since the Kazakh population was nearly halved under Stalin's rule, and a program of Russian settlement was set up (much as China has done in its far Western provinces and Tibet over the last thirty years). Probably the best bits in the book are the details about the first election and the problems with it, although its outcome is depressingly familiar stuff, with the ex-communist bosses all still in power. Indeed, Kazakhstan's autocrat, Nazarbayev is ever-present in the narrative, but Rosten doesn't offer nearly as much criticism of his as one might expect. Strong-men like Nazarbayev have little to offer other than vague assurances of stability, and the world seems to shrug in disinterest when the elections are rigged or he announces constitutional changes that give him total control over the country. Add endemic corruption to the mix and it's hardly any wonder that repressed and frustrated people eventually turn to political Islam or other external outlets to try and effect change. Indeed, other than commenting on how disorienting it must be for people Rosten doesn't really comment much at all on the drive to privatize and potential effects of encouraging rampant capitalism. Of course, the result has been a tiny corrupt elite skimming the cream, and a great deal of problems at the lower end of society. Joma Nazpary's book (which I have not read) "Post-Soviet Chaos: Violence and Dispossession in Kazakhstan " examines this in some detail via fieldwork and interviews.
   
   In any event, Rosten's book has a great number of weaknesses. First and foremost is the diary format. I certainly enjoy the personal perspective, which tends to be much more readable than straight dry history or reportage. A good example is Tom Bissell's narrative of Uzbekistan, Chasing the Sea, which weaves personal experience with a good cribbed history lesson. However, Rosten's account is so choppy that it becomes a real nuisance to read as he jumps willy-nilly from topic to topic. It also means that certain topics are covered in multiple places, and a great deal of information and anecdotes are repeated, some three times over! A good editor could have chucked the diary format and arranged a more flowing narrative that covered each piece in turn and greater depth. For example, it would have been nice to learn a little more about the large Korean population. Or why it is exactly that the Jewish population hasn't fled en masse. More disturbingly, although I am no expert by any means on the region or culture, I did come across a very obvious factual error towards the end which made me question Rosten's accuracy about other things. On page 228 he writes "Nauryz is a traditional Moslem holiday celebrating the New Year.... It is celebrated on March 22. " The Muslim New Year is called "Al-Hijra" and because Islam uses a lunar calendar, it falls on completely different days in each of the Gregorian calendar years. "Nauryz" (more commonly Nowruz) marks the Persian New Year, falls on the vernal equinox (usually March 21 or 22) and is based in the Zoroastrian religion.
   
   The actual prose leaves a great deal to be desired as well. In some places he gets into a groove and writes fluidly and easily, and in others it is very very choppy and wooden. Strings of sentences, each containing a single fact. Again, an editor could have easily cleaned this up and made it a much better read. Attempts at humor generally fall flat, and never does one get a true sense of the emotional confusion and frustration that many of the people he talks to must have felt. On an aesthetic level, the self-publishing format means that there is a notable deficiency in the supplementary material. There is no map (these tend to be very expensive), which is a huge flaw for a book about an unfamiliar country. And although the book has lots of photos, the quality of the reproduction is exceedingly low--worse than a typical newspaper (this is a function of the print-on-demand technology used to print the book).
   
   Ultimately, the book isn't awful, it just isn't that great. Much of what is recounted is pretty typical travelers tales type stuff, and one is going to get a very basic introduction to the country and people. It's true, there isn't a great deal out there on modern Kazakhstan, but most readers will be better served by the 2nd edition of Martha Brill Olcott's "The Kazakhs", which includes a fifty pages on independence and the next few years. Her subsequent book "Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise" gets into recent years in rather more detail than most will want, and the subtitle gives on the gist of it. This is not a book I'd recommend to anyone except those who feel the need to read every word published on the region.



4. We adopted 2 children from Kaz and spent 6 weeks 'in country' and this book put me back in Kazakhstan. Great writing, beautiful insights.
   
   His political commentary is poorly researched and very 'immature' but don't let that distract you from a truly good book, I cherished every page. If you are interested in Kaz, this is a great book
   john
   
   PS I'm hoping he reads this review and writes a second, more researched book, which begins where the first book ends.



5. I found this book to be a shallow view into present day Kazakhstan, with small insight into the region as a whole. The book does little to shed light on the cultural history and core of Kazakhstani society. An easy read, but not especially enlightening. "The Lost Heart of Asia" is a better bet for an incredible overview of the regions ebbs and flows and the cultural nuances which influence Central Asia, which is a more helpful view. Also consider "The Silent Steppe" for a modern history of the country.

5 comments about Dersu the Trapper (Recovered Classics) (Recovered Classics).

1. This is really a fascinating book from several perspectives. A natural history and anthropological look at a time and place unfamiliar to most Americans.



2. A very thoughtful well written book which is particularly timely now even though it was written 100 years ago.



3. Having read this book many years after first seeing the movie Dersu Usala by Kurosawa, I found it thoroughly engaging. It is a chronicle of Arseniev's mapping journeys through parts of Manchuria around the turn of the twentieth century and of his friendship with Dersu. It is told with meticulous attention to the detail of the environment, with many small simple drawings from his journal, and with real love and respect for Dersu himself and his ideas. I was struck by the accuracy of Kurosawa's portrayal of the story and didn't expect the two versions to be so very close.
   
   The movie has been one of my favourites for years and now Arsiniev's book sits right beside it. They are both classics in that you wouldn't change a word or scene of them. The book and movie are treasures and are very highly recommended.



4. Dersu is a very moving story that gave rise to a wonderful movie. The book deserved the film. The film did elegant justice to the book. Akira Kurosawa knew fine material when he found it, and this is prime. It has nature, adventure, survival, the clash of cultures made more profound by a deep and beautiful friendship between representatives of those cultures. Really, though, it is too beautiful for politically correct description. Read it. Give it to your kids to read. It will improve everybody's outlook on life.



5. Basado en los datos y situaciones reales contadas en este libro se realizó uno de los más grandes filmes de Akira kurosawa.
   Un gran libro una gran historia