biography russia

Hardcover. NY, First Second, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This riveting graphic novel biography chronicles Vladimir Putin's rise from a mid-level KGB officer to the autocratic leader of Russia and reveals the truth behind the strongman persona he has spent his career cultivating. In the West's collective imagination, Vladimir Putin is a devious cartoon villain, constantly plotting and scheming to destroy his enemies around the globe and in Ukraine. But how did an undistinguished mid-level KGB officer become one of the most powerful leaders in Russian history? And how much of Putin's tough-guy persona is a calculated performance? Two-color art throughout by Brian "Box" Brown. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Heinemann, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 24 illustrations. Genealogical chart of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. These letters were only discovered in the 1970's at Broadlands, the home of Princess Victoria's younger son, the Earl Mountbatten of Burma. These letters bring new light to bear on major world and minor domestic events, from the crisis with the Prussian court in 1888 to the Queen's agonized concern for her haemophilic children and grandchildren, from the assassination of the Tsar of Russia to her stalwart but fruitless efforts to persuade Princess's Victoria's sister to marry the eldest son of the Prince of Wales. Lord Mountbatten's elder daughter, Lady Brabourne, has provided a fascinating introduction. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. B&w photos, 185 pages. Twenty years after his death, George Balanchine still dominates the world of ballet. Not only have his works been danced by the New York City Ballet continuously since 1948, but they also have been performed by more than two dozen other companies throughout the world. In clear and elegant writing, Terry Teachout brings to life the dramatic story of George Balanchine, a Russian emigre who fell in love with American culture, married four times and kept a mistress on the side, and transformed the art of ballet forever. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Bellevue Literary Press, 1st, 2007, Softcover, 236 pages. Without awkwardness we would not know grace, stability, or balance. Yet no one before Mary Cappello has turned such a penetrating gaze on this misunderstood condition. Fearlessly exploring the ambiguous borders of identity, she mines her own life journeys from Russia to Italy to the far corners of her heart and the depths of a literary or cinematic text to decipher the powerful messages that awkwardness can transmit. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martins Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 350 pages. The spellbinding story of both the man and the theory,this book chronicles one of the most notorious radicals in Mikhail Bakunin, the founder of anarchism, here revealed as a practical moral philosophy rooted in a critique of wealth and power. Mark Leier corrects many of the popular misconceptions about Bakunin and his ideas, offering a fresh interpretation of his life and thoughts. Bakunin is an insightful read for all those who wish to better understand the fundamental basis of modern radical movements. Ex-lib but clean, only residue to acetate wrapper.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Co,, reprint, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. The true story of an African medicine man as he leaves his home to practice his medicine in the city. Wulf Sachs was born in Russia and trained at the Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg. A citizen of South Africa who resided in Johannesburg, he was a practicing psychoanalyst and the author of many books on psychiatry and literary criticism. Classic account of a two and half year psychoanalysis of a South African witch doctor. This book was earlier published with the title Black Anger. Derived from a review posted on-line: Black Hamlet is at the same time a case study in psychoanalytic therapy, the report of a scientific investigation, a political polemic, a collection of ethnographic observations, and the biography of a common man whose remarkable features would otherwise have been overlooked. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st US, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 188 pages, b&w illustrations, endpapers map. Rear of dj with 2"X1" piece missing from bottom edge. Otherwise very good.

Hardcover. Berlin GR, Nicolai Publishing, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. GERMAN TEXT. The history of Berlin's grand hotel. The Adlon opened on October 23, 1907, with the Kaiser, his wife, and many other notables in attendance. It quickly became the social center of Berlin. As the rooms in the Stadtschloss were cold and drafty, the Kaiser paid an annual retainer to keep suites available for his guests.[2] Likewise the Foreign Office used the Adlon for accommodation during state visits, with guests including Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala. Notable guests of the early years included industrialists such as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller, as well as politicians like Walter Rathenau, Gustav Stresemann and the French prime minister Aristide Briand. Many wealthy Berliners lived for extended periods of time in the hotel, while its ballrooms hosted official government functions and society events. Many photos. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1st US, 1941, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 352 pages. Translated from Russian by Malcolm Burr. Cloth covers, blue stamped titles, 3 b&w illustrated maps, blue top edge stain. Rubbing and light soiling to covers, spine lightly cocked, previous owner's bookplate and signature to front endpapers, light foxing and discoloration to endpapers, discoloration to page block ends; otherwise, a neat, tight copy of a scare book.

Hardcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 835 pages. Sergey Prokofiev, a compulsive diarist and gifted and idiosyncratic writer, possessed an incorrigibly sardonic curiosity about individuals and events. When he left Russia after the 1917 Revolution, his diaries were recovered from the family flat in Petrograd and later hidden at considerable personal risk by the composer Nikolai Myaskovsky. Prokofiev himself smuggled them out of the country after his first return to the Soviet Union in 1927. The later diaries, written in the West, were brought back by legal decree after the composer's death in 1953, to be kept in an inaccessible section of the Soviet State Archive. Eventually Prokofiev's son Sviatoslav was allowed to transcribe the voluminous contents. When he and his son Sergei eventually emigrated to Paris, they undertook the gigantic task of reproducing the partially encoded manuscript in an intelligible form.Diaries, 1907-1914, the first of three volumes that extend to 1933, covers Prokofiev's years at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. Simultaneously attached to and exasperated by the tradition exemplified by composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, and Tcherepnin, the brash young genius relishes the power of his talent to irritate, challenge, and finally overcome the establishment. Clean copy.

Softcover. London, IB Tauris, 1st pbk, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 314 pages, color and b&w illustrations. In this first biography of Alexander Griboyedov in English, Laurence Kelly paints a vivid picture of a man of remarkable literary talent and diplomatic gifts that were nevertheless overshadowed by ill-fortune. Involved in the 1825 Decembrist plot to overthrow the Tsarist state and the mission to further Russia's expansionist agenda in the Caucasus, the famous writer was eventually murdered by zealous mobs in Tehran. This book makes an invaluable contribution to the diplomatic history of Russia, the Caucasus and Iran at the same time illuminating the life and works of a writer who was among nineteenth-century Russia's most respected and prominent writers. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, MInerva Press, reprint, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 489 pages. Bright, clean copy.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 521 pages. The fourth volume in Frank's monumental five part biography of the great Russian writer. Covers the six most remarkably productive years in the novelist's entire career. It was in this short span of time that Dostoevsky produced three of his greatest novels--Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Devils--and two of his best novellas, The Gambler and The Eternal Husband. All these masterpieces were written in the midst of harrowing practical and economic circumstances, as Dostoevsky moved from place to place, frequently giving way to his passion for roulette. Having remarried and fled from Russia to escape importuning creditors and grasping dependents, he could not return for fear of being thrown into debtor's prison. He and his young bride, who twice made him a father, lived obscurely and penuriously in Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, as he toiled away at his writing, their only source of income. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 401 pages. The first volume in Frank's monumental five part biography of the great Russian writer. No date on copyright page. Clean copy.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover 395 pages. The third volume in Frank's monumental five part biography of the great Russian writer. This volume begins with the writer's return to Saint Petersburg after a ten-year Siberian exile and traces how his engagement in the cultural and social ferment of Russia in the early 1860s led to his discovery of the themes that would underlie his mature masterpieces. Clean copy.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover 320 pages. The second volume in Frank's monumental five part biography of the great Russian writer. No date on copyright page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 374 pages. Russia has a fascinating history and author Robert Coughlan has provided us with an informative and compelling peek into a particularly notable segment of it, essentially the 1700s. The book covers the period from Tsar [Czar] Alexis (briefly) up to the reign of Tsar Alexander I, probably the most beloved of all the Romanovs. The focus of the work is on Catherine the Great. Her mentor, Elizabeth, was important through her shrewd handling of the many bumps and potholes which eventually allowed Catherine to take the throne against many rivals and usurpers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, E. P. Dutton, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 240 pages illustrated throughout with 156 plates including 74 in full color. Remainder mark on bottom edge. Large folio. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. Follows the artist from his birth in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1892, through the 1980's. Beautiful color plates include costume design, magazine covers (Harper's Bazar), sculpture, vases, mirrors, medallions, jewelry, labels, bottles, playing cards, watches.

Softcover. London, Phoenix Press, reprint, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 718 pages. One of history's greatest reformers, Garibaldi won his first battle against Aegean Pirates, his last battle against German Dragoons. He went to jail in Russia and led Brazilian rebels in the field. He was twice an admiral and seven times a general, a high government official in at least five countries, became Commander in Chief of the Uruguayan Army, Dictator of Sicily and Freeman of the City of London.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 600 pages, in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. In this substantial work, Berberova, a renowned writer who left her homeland along with many compatriots in the wake of the 1917 Revolution, chronicles the travails she encounters in poverty-stricken Russia, poverty-stricken Berlin, and poverty-stricken Paris, where she lived from 1925-1950.

Softcover. NY, Guggenheim Museum, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 267 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers. In 1915, Kazimir Malevich changed the future of modern art when his experiments in painting led the Russian avant-garde into pure abstraction. He called his innovation Suprematism--an art of pure geometric form meant to be universally comprehensible regardless of cultural or ethnic origin. His Suprematist masterpiece, White Square on White (1920-27), continues to inspire artists throughout the world. Focused exclusively on this defining moment in Malevich's career, Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism features nearly 120 paintings, drawings and objects, among them several recently discovered masterworks. In addition, the book includes previously unpublished letters, essays and diaries, along with essays by international scholars, who shed new light on this popular figure and his devotion to the spiritual in art.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Brothers, 3rd Ed., 1941, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on the spine, 447 pages. Memoir of life on wartime Europe's frontline by a trailblazing female reporter. Virginia Cowles was just twenty-seven years old when she decided to transform herself from a society columnist into a foreign press correspondent. Looking for Trouble is the story of this evolution, as Cowles reports from both sides of the Spanish Civil War, London on the first day of the Blitz, Nazi-run Munich, and Finlands bitter, bloody resistance to the Russian invasion. Along the way, Cowles also meets Adolf Hitler (an inconspicuous little man), Benito Mussolini, Winston Churchill, Martha Gellhorn, and Ernest Hemingway. Her reportage blends sharp political analysis with a gossip columnists chatty approachability and a novelists empathy. Cowles understood in 1937 long before even the average politician that Fascism in Europe was a threat to democracy everywhere. Her insights on extremism are as piercing and relevant today as they were eighty years ago. Clean, bright copy, no dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 400 pages, b&w illustrations. A touching, brilliant and ground-breaking biography of one of literary history's most famous couple, at once a dual biography, a history, and the portrait of a long and stormy marriage. In a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Remainder line on bottom edge.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 400 pages. In 1897 Tolstoy wrote his daughter Tonya, explaining his opposition to her desired marriage: "As far as love is concerned, it's an ignoble and unhealthy sentiment-I would not have opened my door to it." Perhaps this passage reflects the turbulent marriage of Leo and Sonya-first the promise of love and then disillusionment. Certainly, there was a love of sorts-their marriage lasted 48 years and brought forth 13 children-but the later half of the marriage was soured by acrimony, secrecy, and great emotional wounding. The greatest division came with the battle over the rights to Tolstoy's works. Sonya finally got sole possession, outliving Leo by nine years and plagued by the thought that she had been wrong for her genius husband. In intimate and scrupulous detail often drawn directly from Leo and Sonya's diaries, Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) has profiled the disintegration of a marriage. Clean copy.