My class is using this book for a third year Russian course. The book has a lot of great stories and exercises, but often it is difficult to read the book with the vast amount new vocabulary for a student to remember. The dictionary in the back does not have alot of basic words that the student may have forgotten since the second year of study. An additional dictionary is recommended. I often have to refer to my dictionary while doing homework. But I really learned a great deal about the Russian culture from the readings.

"Places : A Directory of Public Places for Private Events and Private Places for Public Functions" is a thorough and concise guide for event planers. Each entry very well describes the location and also answers the questions most commonly asked by propective clients. I would only wish there were more entries for New Jersey ( or even a seperate book!). I would recommed this book for wedding consultants,party planners, etc.

Readers of Marie Vassiltchikov's "Berlin Diaries" will especially find her sister's autobiography an interesting read. "Purgatory of Fools" also provides a valuable eyewitness account of life under Hitler from the perspective of an emigree Russian Princess. It doesn't have the absorbing immediacy of her sister's diary, yet it makes up for this with an historical perspective which comes from writing thirty years after the fact.
Obviously many of the same situations and aristocratic characters encountered in "Berlin Diaries" are to be found here, but Tatiana's own story takes a different turn from her sister's after she marries Paul Metternich, great grandson of the famous diplomat of the Congress of Vienna, and is separated from Missie for most of the rest of the war. Her own experiences after September 1941 center not on the July 20 Plot, or the bombing of Berlin and Vienna, but on managing her husband's two estates in his absence and traveling constantly between them. One of these is totally destroyed by Allied bombing, and the other confiscated by the Czech government at the end of the war. She evidently developed a deep love for this last estate, Konigswart, which is described as a palace and museum. Missie pops in and out of the narrative from time to time, but in Tatiana's book we get a far fuller picture of her husband, Paul Metternich, as well as of her two parents and other family members. The first seventy or so pages describe her childhood at great length, which includes her family's narrow escape from a dire fate during the Russian revolution, and growing up in various locales in Germany and France (mostly in France; most of their schooling took place at a lycee outside Paris) and finally a few years spent in Lithuania just before the war. The book is well illustrated with photographs. All in all, a great pleasure to read, and it's a pity it isn't better known.

This books tells a relatively unknown story, the story about how American Lend-Lease aircraft were transfered to Russia. From the 14.500-odd planes that went to the Russians during WW2, almost 8.000 went by the ALSIB route (Alaska-Siberia). 2.618 of these were Airacobras, 2.397 of them Kingcobras. This book describes how it was done and by whom, both in English and in Russian. The focus is not on the planes, but on the people from those two great countries who helped each other against their common enemies: the cold and the Germans. Apart from the text, there are also many photo's describing the harsh conditions which both Americans and Russians had to face, most of the depicting the people, but there are some good shots of Airacobra's and Kingcobra's as well, though not as much as I hoped there would be. There is also room enough for other types, you'll find B-25's, A-20's, C-47's, P-40's as well. Good background material for the serious WW2 aircraft historian, giving a look behind the scenes and insight that not many other books about WW2 aviation can hope to match.