Russia

Hardcover. Leningrad, Aurora Art Publishers, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 170 pages. Brown cloth w/ color pictorial label on front. Color pictorial slipcase shows minor edgewear. Text in French, captions next to pictures also in English. Beautiful color plates throughout. Tight, clean, unmarked.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1942, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Front of dust jacket is cut out and glued onto title-page. Nicely done. Blue cloth covers with mild shelf wear. Translated from Russian by Tatiana Balkoff Drowne. Nice color illustrations by Vera Bock. No markings.

Hardcover. New York , Abrams, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 135 pages, illustrated throughout in color. Light shelf-wear to dust jacket. Faint foxing to edges, otherwise a clean, tight copy. 100 color plates with 39 black & white illustrations.

NY, Villard, 1st , 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 86 pages + paintings from Botkin's portfolio. Illustrated with black & white photos and color paintings by Botkin. Text compiled by Botkin's daughter Marina Schweitzer. Foreword by Greg King. Bright, unclipped 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.

Philadelpia, Vertex Book/Auerbach Publishers, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, lightly soiled dust jacket, 243 pages. Map endpapers One man's story of being arrested on trumped up charges as an enemy of the Soviet State and being sent to Siberia for eight years. Inscription on dedication page (by book jacket designer).

Hardcover. London, Chris Boot, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 252 pages. In this volume, ten Magnum photographers turn their lenses on contemporary Georgia. Situated on the cusp of Russia and Asia, but with a European culture dating back to the 7th century BC, Georgia was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1922. Its independence was restored in 1991, but it then suffered from civil war and a breakdown of its economic infrastructure. In the last decade, however, despite ongoing tensions in its relations with Russia, Georgia has mounted a spirited comeback. Magnum photographers Antoine d'Agata, Jonas Bendiksen, Thomas Dworzak, Martine Franck, Alex Majoli, Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Martin Parr, Paolo Pellegrin, Mark Power and Alec Soth visited the country during spring 2009, each pursuing their own theme (Alec Soth goes in search of the 'most beautiful woman in Georgia', for example). All found themselves enchanted by the Georgian people, something strongly conveyed in their photographs as well as in personal text journals which accompany the images. This well-designed volume also includes a fold-out map, marked with each photographer's journey; a chapter showing the best of Magnum photographers' work over 60 years (including by Magnum's founders Robert Capa from his visit to Georgia with John Steinbeck in 1948 and Henri Cartier-Bresson); and an illuminating introduction by the Paris-based New Yorker writer, and Georgia expert, Wendell Steavenson.

Hardcover. Sverdlovsk, Mid-Urals Publishing House, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Beautiful 2 volume set exploring the history and various uses and creations of Malachite. Profusely illustrated with color photographs. In pristine condition with original pictorial slip cover (slight edge-wear). Book 1: Poetics of Stone. Book 2:Chronicles Documents Commentaries. Text in Russian and English.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 414 pages. Translation by Richard Taylor. Dust jacket spine faded. Previous price sticker on dust jacket front flap. Else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with minor wear. Selected and translated by Olga Davydoff Dax. Color illustrations by the author throughout. Mariamna Davydoff, the Russian lady who wrote and illustrated this memoir of her life before the Revolution, was born in 1871 into a large, aristocratic family whose ancestors can he traced back to the eleventh century. After fleeing Russia in 1919, she eventually settled in Brittany with a sister and there reproduced, from memory, albums of detailed text and watcrcolors that had been abandoned in Russia and were later destroyed by the Bolsheviks. The result is a unique, first-hand account of a way of life that we have previously known almost exclusively through the works of Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, and a few other writers of the late nineteenth century.

Softcover. Los Angeles, privately printed, 1st, circa 1980, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 47 pages. Softcover with light blue paper wrappers. Black and white pictures in rear. Faded wrappers, and abrasion on first few pages. Previous owner's name in upper right corner of title page. Boris Novikoff was a ballet dancer and the brother of the ballet master, Ivan Novikoff.

Hardcover. Intercourse, Pennsylvania, Good Books, 1st, 1991, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Very Good, The furniture tradition of the Mennonites, Russian immigrants in North America. 231 pages illustrated with several maps and 241 (mostly color, some black/white) photographic illustrations. Book is in near fine condition, dust jacket is in very good condition with some signs of edge wear.

Hardcover. Ann Arbor, MI, Ardis, 1st English, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 565 pages. B/w illustrations throughout. Gilt title on spine. Decorated endpapers. Dust Jacket shows some wear due to age: yellowing, fraying and chipping to edges of front, spine and back, but still in tact. Cover boards clean, covered in teal fabric and in good shape. Pages clean, edges slightly yellowed. From the front flap: "...a landmark work in Russian theater scholarship, this study reveals Meyerhold in the context of his time, as seen by friends and enemies, actors and critics, and analyzes the development of his remarkable career as Russia's most celebrated and influential experimental director."

Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st pbk, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 530 pages. Books about thinkers require a kind of unity that their thought may not possess. This cautionary statement is especially applicable to Mikhail Bakhtin, whose intellectual development displays a diversity of insights that cannot be easily integrated or accurately described in terms of a single overriding concern. Clean, bright copy, as new.

Hardcover. Paris, Collection Neuf, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 163 pages, black & white photographs throughout, French text, tan cloth board. No dust jacket.

Hardcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 308 pages, map endpapers. Light edge wear to dust jacket, small sticker on front cover. Else a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 320 pages, b&w photos, in a bright dust jacket. The true, little-known story of a family torn apart by revolution and war. Olga Chekhova, a stunning Russian beauty, was the niece of playwright Anton Chekhov and a famous Nazi-era film actress who was closely associated with Hitler.

Softcover. London, Tate, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 208 pages. Softcover. Color and black and white pictures throughout. Light edgewear to wrappers.

Hardcover. NY, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. This pioneering study documents the extent and diversity of the impact of Nietzschean ideas on Soviet literature and culture. It shows for the first time how these ideas, unacknowledged and reworked, entered and shaped that culture and stimulated the imagination of both supporters and detractors of the regime. 421 pages, a bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. Nashville TN, Vanderbilt University Press, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 271 pages. The first English translation of the last work of Gogol to be published during his lifetime. The only important nonfiction prose work of the Russian novelist, the*e thirty-two critical essays, written in the form of personal letters, define Gogol's views on religion, morality, and aesthetics and provide a key to the underlying motives and messages of his earlier fiction, including Dead Souls and The Inspector General. Translated from the Russian by Jesse Zeldin.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, The Winchell Co., 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 297 pages, b&w illustrations, in a bright dust jacket. Clean. Helene Iswolsky, daughter of a Russian diplomat, grew up in Japan, Denmark, Russia, and France. In 1911, her father became Russian ambassador to France. She returned to Russia for her debut in 1914, to be presented to the Tsarina Alexandra. While there she attended the wedding of Prince Felix Yusupov, who was to murder Rasputin three years later. After the Tsar was overthrown, her father retired to Biarritz and died there in 1919, leaving unpaid debts. The author took up translating and writing. She had a religious awakening and became a Catholic. A sojourn in a Benedictine monastery left her changed, but she decided not to make the cloister her life. The author knew many notable people in the Paris area, especially writers, poets, critics, philosophers of the "new wave," Christian humanists, and Russian emigres. She attended the Sunday afternoon gatherings of Jacques Maritain and Nicholas Berdiaev, and worked on Emmanuel Mounier's journal "Esprit." When the Nazis occupied France, she escaped to America with her mother. Here she founded an ecumenical movement called "The Third Hour" and taught Russian at Fordham University and other schools. She was a close friend of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. Scarce.

Hardcover. London, Fuel, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. 192 pages. Plutser-Sarno has been collecting Russian street messages, usually hand-written and posted on walls, for two decades; this book is a sampling from his Museuam of Ads and Announcements. The notes are of a great variety: seeking recruits for cults or prostitution, offering items, some of them bizzare ones, for barter, warning miscreants of dire harm should they, for example, continue to steal light bulbs from a common corridor, prohibiting--predictably--a wide range of activities, and occasionally pleading in tones of insanity.Many of the messages are shown in illustrations, and Pluter-Sarno offers brief comments, sometimes necessary ones: Without them I shouldn't have known, for example, that 'artificial rock' was a euphemism for a concrete slab. (I'm sorry though that he didn't explain what curious Slavic behaviors created the need for notices in public lavoratories asking users to abstain from standing on toilet bowls.) Given the range of notes here, it's possible for the reader to get a hint of Soviet and post-Soviet customs and beliefs, the daily struggling with poverty and paucity, and the impact of the political upon the individual.Because Fuel, the publisher, is a design company it's small wonder that as an object this is a wonderful book. It's a small hardback with a cover done in relief, and sewn in signatures. The outer 2/3 of the pages are a kraft-paper brown and the inner 1/3, with colour illustrations, a cream color.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Softcover, 128 pages. INSCRIBED BY BOTH EDITORS on the front endpapers. Contributors include Dziga Vertov ('The Factory of Facts and Other Writings'), Alfred H. Barr, Jr. ('Russian Diary 1927-28', along with Jere Abbott, John E. Bowlt, and Elizabeth Jones), A. V. Lunacharsky ('Gogol-Meyerhold's "The Inspector-General"'), Paul Schmidt (on Meyerhold), Margit Rowell (on Vladimir Tatlin), and Michelson. Related ephemera laid in.