Moskva-Petushki, which is translated in English as Moscow to the End of the Line, is Venedikt Erofeev's greatest work, one drunken man's (Venichka's) journey on the Moskovskaia-Gor'skovskaia train line to visit his lover and child in the Petushki. En route, Venichka talks with other travelers in dialogue and he also speaks in monologue about various themes such as drinking, Russian literature and philosophy and the sad, poetic soul of the Russian peasant. As the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly dark, disoriented, hallucinogenic and surrealistic, in proportion to the narrator's alcohol intake.

Moscow to the End of the Line was written in 1970. During this time, Erofeev, himself, was traveling around the Soviet Union working as a telephone cable layer. Erofeev's friends have said the author made the story up in order to entertain his fellow workers as they traveled, and that many of these fellow workers were later incorporated as characters in the book.

The text of the novel began to be circulated in samizdat within the Soviet Union and then it was smuggled to the West where it was eventually translated into English. The official Russian language publication took place in Paris in 1977. With glasnost, Moscow to the End of the Line was able to be circulated freely within Russia, but, rather than stick to the original form, the novel was abridged in the government pamphlet Sobriety and Culture, ostensibly as a campaign against alcoholism. Finally, in 1995, it was officially published, together with all the formerly edited obscenities and without censorship.

Although he is an alcoholic, Venichka never comes across to the reader as despicable. Venichka is not a man who drinks because he wants to drink; he drinks to escape a reality that has gone beyond miserable and veered off into the absurd. He is not a stupid or pitiable character, but rather one who has no outlet for his considerable intelligence. That Venichka is very educated is obvious; he makes intelligent and well-read references to both literature and religion. However, in the restrictive Soviet Union of his time, there was no outlet for this kind of intelligent creativity; Venichka is forced to channel his creative instincts into bizarre drink recipes and visions of sphinxes, angels and devils.

Although many will see Moscow to the End of the Line as satire, it really is not. Instead, it is Erofeev's anguished and heartfelt cry, a cry that demanded change. Venichka is not a hopeless character, however, the situation in which he is living is a hopeless one.

A semi-autobiographical work, Moscow to the End of the Line was never meant as a denunciation of alcoholism but rather an explanation of why alcohol was so tragically necessary in the day-to-day life of citizens living under Soviet rule.

Moscow to the End of the Line is a highly entertaining book and it is a book that is very important in understanding the Russia of both yesterday and today as well. This book is really a classic of world literature and it is a shame that more people do not read Moscow to the End of the Line rather than relying on the standard "bestseller." This book deserves to be more widely read and appreciated.

This is a sublime little tale, saturated with humor and pathos. Erofeev (both author & narrator have the same name, heightening the autobiographical tone of the book) is the Dante of the Moscow commuter rail. He stumbles from bar to bar and a purgatory of the 'thirteen varieties of Soviet vodka.' Then, it's onto the train, which takes him some thirty stops from Kursk station and 'The Hammer and Sickle' to the 'end of the line' at Petushki (which I'm told means 'flowers' in Russian) where he is to meet his Beatrice.

But (unlike Dante) Erofeev never seems to arrive. As he downs more and more hooch, the story becomes progressively more blotched and incoherent. It culminates in the Passion of Erofeev, in which our poor hero is driven up against the wall of the Kremlin (though whether its the Kremlin in Moscow or Petushki is unclear) and left screwed.

This is a story about mercy. Read it. It is easily one of the best books I've read in the past year. Then pass the word along, because it deserves to be better known.

Ah, this book...a cherished one for me, pilfered from a friend who's father studied under Nabokov (but later given back). I read this under the serious spell of Knut Hamsun and this book is similiar to "Hunger" but perhaps more humorous. It's about an unemployed, alcholic cable fitter who is fired for charting diagrams of his comrades "idleness" correalated with the days they get drunk. Thrust into a serious drinking binge he is stuck on a train trying to reach Moscow and in between we have flashbacks of him trying to buy vodka before restaurants and stores have opened, giving us recipes of cocktails made out of aftershave ("Aunt Clara's Kiss) that brings on hallucinations and incredible verbal pyrotechnics full of literary ramblings and political rumblings. The whole time his hallucinations are marked by a pair of overcoated angels egging him on or chastising his behavior as he mixes up his route on the train forgetting to disembark and actually heading away from his destination. He finally does reach Moscow and the novel closes like a hand over a movie lens as abruptly as it started. It is a startling book, not only the best of the samizdat novels (works distributed like fanzines secretly during the communist regime) but by far the most dazzling comic novels ever written about desperation and alcholism. It is an incredible book and after reading it you will never have patience for another Bukowski book again.

As with his other books, William Dunham puts mathematics in an historical (and sometime political) context. This time he takes this kind of look at a few narrow slices of the huge volume of works by Euler. Each chapter focuses on a different branch of mathematics touched by Euler and each could probably be expanded to fill a book of its own. Very interesting but it requires a strong mathematical background on the part of the reader. I would not recommend it to someone who has not taken some calculus courses.

With the publication of this, his third book, Dunham has once more shown himself to be a master himself of mathematical explanation. Unlike his previous two books, The Mathematical Universe and Journey Through Genius, which covered results by a variety of mathematicians, this book focuses on selected results that sprang from the remarkable mind of Leonard Euler, one of the most prolific and important mathematicians of all time. What sets Euler apart is not only the vast quantity of his output (the publication of his collected works, the Opera Omnia, spans six dozen volumes, or over 25,000 pages in all!), but also the breadth and originality of his work. Not only did Euler contribute to a wide array of mathematical fields -- from number theory to complex analysis to geometry -- but in many cases, he was the founder of those fields. For example, Euler invented the field of analytical number theory, and he was the first mathematician to recognize the importance of and to discover the important properties of complex numbers.

This book in many ways resembles Dunham's Journey Through Genius. As in that book, Dunham has selected 15 or so theorems to present in detail, and he makes an effort to keep the proofs similar in spirit to the original proofs. Although the proofs are complete and the book is full of equations, they are accessible to anyone with a high school level of mathematics education. But in addition to the proofs, Dunham also provides historical context, as well as commentary on how later mathematicians used and improved upon Euler's work. For example, we learn that Euler began to loose the sight in his right eye at the age of 32, and that despite his virtual blindness by the age of 65, he continued his prolific rate of output until his death at age 84.

The book's title is taken from a quote by Laplace, who said, ``Read Euler, read Euler. He is the master of us all.'' Indeed, if you have any interest in mathematics, you will almost certainly find yourself in complete agreement with Laplace's sentiments by the time you finish reading this wonderful book. ...

Mr. Dunham portrays Euler, the mathematical prodigy from Switzerland in a clear and consice way. Of Euler's countless contributions, Dunham takes the reader on a tour in eight dynamic areas of mathematics. Where others failed, Euler succeeded. The mathematical prodigy answered a plea for help from Jakob Bernoulli, the renowned mathematician of the time, in summing the now-well known infinte series: 1/k^2. Written for the mathematically literate, this book is another tribute to the most proficient mathematician in history, the great Leonhard Euler.

Dunham has done an excellent job of taking us through the history of mathematics providing a context with the civilization of the time. He shapes his production around what he considers to be the great theorems of mathematics. The order of presentation is chronological. Early on we see great admiration for Euclid and his "Elements" as two of Euclid's theorems appear on the list, a proof of the Pythagorean theorem and the proof that there are infinitely many primes. Euler and Cantor are also honored with two theorems included among the collection. However there is more to Dunham's presentation than just the proofs. We find other related results by these masters and other great mathematicians that were their contemporaries. He shows reverence for Newton. Gauss and Weierstrass and others are mentioned but none of their theorems are highlighted. It is not his intention to slight these great mathematicians. Rather, Dunham's criteria seems to be to present the theorems that have simple and elegant proofs but often surprising results. His coverage of Cantor is particularly good. It seems that he is most knowledgeable about Cantor's mathematics of transfinite numbers and the related axiomatic set theory.

For a detailed description of the chpaters in this work, look at the detailed review by Shard here at Amazon. I found this book well written and authoritative and learned a few things about Euler and number theory that I hadn't known from my undergraduate and graduate training in mathematics. Yet I did not give the book five stars.

There are a couple of omissions that I find reduce it to a four star rating. My main objection is the slighting of Evariste Galois. Galois was the great French mathematician who died in a duel at the early age of 21 in the year 1832. Yet, in his short life he developed a theory of abstract algebra seemingly unrelated to the great unsolved questions about constructions with straight edge and compass due to the Greeks and yet his theory resolved many of these questions. I was very impressed in graduate school when I learned the Galois theory and came to realize that problems such as a solution to the general 5th degree equation by radicals and the trisection of an arbitrary angle with straight edge and compass were impossible.

Now, Galois theory is certainly beyond the scope of this book but so is non-Euclidean geometry and aspects of number theory and set theory that Dunham chooses to mention. He spends a great deal of time on Euclid's work and the various possible constructions with straight edge and compass. Also, in the chapter on Cardano's proof of the general solution to the cubic, he also presents the solution to the quartic and refers to Abel's result on the impossibility of the general solution to the quintic equation. This would have been the perfect place to introduce Galois who independently and at the same time in history proved the impossibility of solving the general quintic equation by radicals. Oddly Galois is never once mentioned in the entire book.

In discussing number theory and Euler's contributions, the theorems and conjectures of Fermat are mentioned. This book was written in 1991 and it presents Fermat's last theorem as an unproven conjecture. Andrew Wiles presented a proof of Fermat's last theorem to the mathematical community in 1993 and after some needed patchwork to the proof, it is now agreed that Fermat's last theorem is true. There are a number of books written on Fermat's last theorem including an excellent book by Simon Singh. It seems that Dunham's book is popular and has been reprinted at least 10 times since the original printing in 1991. It would have been appropriate to modify the discussion of Fermat's last theorem in one of these reprintings.

Absolutely fantastically written. Dunham takes unfamiliar mathematical theorems and makes sense out of the whole works. Plus, he gives detailed (and extremely interesting) accounts of the people and times of certain mathematics. The book has it all, history, humor, interest and most important of all the truth of the universe and the giants who attained those truths. The beauty of it is, you don't even need to be a great mathematician to enjoy and understand this wonderful book.

This book is an important read for a layman trying to get a better grasp on the actual historical building blocks of math. Because Dunham goes through the actual problems and solutions of great mathemeticians the book moves beyond a simple narrative. A deceptively relevant book for anyone trying to understand intellectual history.

Its nice to finally see the beauty of what the dullards back in math class were trying to teach us. The reviewers are right that the personalities of some of the mathemeticians do come alive here. But that has been done elsewhere (in more detail as well).

The discovery and refinement of mathematics is a central component of civilization, and this is a wonderful way to see its actual historical footings.

In this follow-on to his excellent "Journey Through Genius", William Dunham once again breathes life into a variety of mathematical topics. Whereas "Journey" was arranged around 12 great mathematical theorems, this book is arranged around the 26 letters of the alphabet. Some chapters cover the work of individuals (e.g., "Euler", "Knighted Newton", "Lost Leibniz", and "Russell's Paradox"), while others describe important mathematical results (e.g., "Isoperimetric Problem", "Spherical Surface", and "Trisection"). Still others, such as "Mathematical Personality" and "Where are the Women?", address social aspects of the field.

As in the previous book, Dunham's descriptions are entertaining and enlightening. The main difference is that this book has broader coverage. As a result, it tends to omit more of the proofs, which I found disappointing, but perhaps that will make it of interest to a wider audience. For people with a deeper interest in mathematics, I recommend you read either "Journey Through Genius" or "Euler: The Master of Us All", another Dunham masterpiece that includes detailed proofs throughout.

William Dunham has exercised wonderful judgement in a book this thin, making sure that maths, history, biography, and personalities appear in good measure.

There is one chapter for each letter of the alphabet ranging through Arithmetic, Knighted Newton, Mathematical Personality, and culminating in Z ( a chapter on complex or "imaginary" numbers). Even a chapter titled "Where are the women?"! Also, see the chapter on Bertrand Rusell. It will hardly take you an hour or two to read a chapter and you can read almost at random

You need not be intimidated if you do not want to delve deeply into maths. The author has provided just about enough mathematical material in terms of proofs, calculations, diagrams (interspersed with wry humour) The material is not too dense even for the non-technical reader, though you must of course, have the patience to follow a train of thought to its conclusion.

Personally, it represented a return to the wonderful world of maths after a long hiatus, after explorations of such formal (Hall & Knight, SL Loney) and informal (George Gamow, Douglas Hofstafdter, Roger Penrose) scientific writing in my student days.

Some of the pardonable omissions are: 1) I would have liked to see full length chapters on some of my personal favorites such as Gauss, Cauchy, and Hilbert

2) On the utility of prime numbers and number theory, the author seems to have missed out on applications in cryptography

The editing and presentation is excellent. The book is very affordable. Buy two copies, one for your bookshelf, and one for your nephew (niece!)- the budding math prodigy in your family

Absolutely wonderful. This book should be titled "Obscure Math For Dummies," as it is always written so that a reader with basic mathematical background can understand it. I have read quite a bit of similar titles, but this is the ONLY one I would reccommend! The Mathematical Universe patches up holes of concepts that you never quite understood as well as introduces plenty of new math and its history. Loved the coverage of number theory.