As a native Russian, I want to thank the author, Grigory Medvedev, for a honest and professional overview of Chernobyl disaster. His incredibly deep insight of human characters who were in touch with Chernobyl fire filled my heart with a great sorrow because they paid a high price of their health or lives. The book made me reevaluate my vision of our 20th century where still exists a nuclear power. Who will be the next victim of whose deadly mistake? Who must step in to shield others? What kind goverment promoted Chernobyl?

This book is essential for anybody to read in order to help all nations in organization of a prevention mechanism against such deadly mistakes.

As the book claims- a minute by minute account of the great tragedy. Being a fan of nuclear psysics this book has taught me a lot not only about physics but of the Russian culture, secretive cover-ups and human suffering. If you want to know everything there is about this Chernobyl and not be bored, then this is the book to get.

This book describes the accident and events leading to the accident in great detail. Anyone interested in human factors as they relate to loss prevention should find this book an excellent resource. The accident was caused by a long series of very serious human errors. The author also compares the Chernobyl accident to the Three Mile Island accident. In spite of the difference in design of the two nuclear plants, the sequences of events leading to the two accidents were strikingly similar

Andre Makine, who fled the Soviet Union in 1987 when he was thirty has been compared to Nabokov, Pasternak, and Proust. The author is a gifted story-teller with "Confessions" filled with skillfully-woven vignettes that provide a bitter-sweet view of Russian life. The book revolves around two friends and virtual brothers, Arkady and Alyosha, young pioneers in Stalin's postwar world. "Confessions" tells of the lives of their two families, those of Yakov Zinger - Arkady's father, and Pyotr Yevdokimov, father to Alyosha. There is adventure in Pyotr's skill as a sniper behind German lines in World War II, horror in the story of Svetlana, the "merry spinster" amidst survival during the Siege. There are magical scenes of Russian life and a most enjoyable vignette that revolved around the arrival of propaganda cinema presenting "The Threat of Atomic War", tirades against the "filthy American swine" and the bombing of Hiroshima and the exhortation from Russian authorities to build shelters. There is humor with Arkady on the drums and Alyosha on the trumpet bleating their protest against the apparitchik visitors from the Party but more singing out in the name of their Courtyard of families and friends, singing "in the name of the silence of our mothers". Alyosha is a fallen standard-bearer. Makine structures the book with Alyosha as narrator addressing his remembrances of their families' lives to his friend. In the end, Makine imparts a heaviness of heart with disillusionment with the Soviet dreams of Great Victory and a feeling of emptiness that the West (neither of Paris, nor of the States) has not been able to fill.

Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer is a beautiful book. The story involves two families, that of Yakov Zinger and Pyotr Yevdokimov. The story is told in the form of a memoir of their youth written by Pyotr's son Alyosha to Yakov's son Arkady. The story unfolds slowly. On the surface the memoirs invoke memories of the children's summers in their village. They were young pioneers filled (apparently) with a belief in the inevitable victory of socialism. As the name of this novel implies they were the standard-bearers of socialist youth marching towards the 'radiant horizon'. However, flowing beneath the beautiful words evoking their idyllic summers is the undertone of tragedy that envelops each of the families' pasts. Those tragedies are slowly and inexorably revealed. Pyotr, a sniper operating behind German lines during the Second World War lost both limbs at the hands of an "unfortunate artillery mistake' by his own troops. Yakov survived a German prison camp in Poland by surrounding himself with a mountain of dead and frozen bodies. Their wives tragic pasts are also slowly revealed. One survived the siege of Leningrad and witnessed unspeakable horrors in the process. The other lost her parents to Stalin's purges and spent her youth in an orphanage for children of those purges. As these stories are revealed the boys' otherwise inexplicable actions leading up to their confrontation with their Pioneer group leaders becomes slightly more understandable. I cannot convey the beauty of this book in adequate terms. Its power lies in the contrast between the beauty and power of Makine's writing about village life through the eyes of innocent children and the stark but unexpressed horror that percolates through the lives of these two families. This unstated horror serves as the thematic counterpoint to the rather unremarkable events that form the core of the narrative. This was a book worth reading.

Anyone who is open minded enough to appreciate Spoken Word art really should take notice of this guy. He's WAY out there, and I think we all need to get WAY out there every now and then. I first heard this on CD when it came out. I listened to the whole thing and it just pulled me in. I'd never heard anything like it before in spoken word or elsewhere. It was closer I think to poetry than to stories. In each track, Mr. Codrescu paints a picture for the listener to digest and interpret. Most of the tracks have a serious message, but I like the way he uses sarcam, cynicism and humor to get the point across. Some of my favorite tracks are the one about Burger King, also the track where he has a conversation with his son about drugs, and the one about being a bored kid in the gymnasium school in Romania. Actually they're all really good. Anyhow, the reason I checked in here is because somewhere in my last move I lost the CD and I'm finally getting around to replacing it. Unfortunately it looks as though it isn't available as CD anymore. Oh well. I'll have to settle for a tape. It's better than not having it in my collection at all. polishbeer@aol.com

His bit about VAMPIRES is NOT TO BE MISSED!!

It is always difficult to say what Andrei Makine's books are about. One could describe the plot or the story-line and feel that one hasn't said anything at all. Makine's novels are like all great works of art. They set up a resonance inside us that is intensely pleasureable and also painful. In Requiem, as in his other novels, Makine's prose is poetic and technically flawless, the historical content is fascinating and his irony and humor elicit a warm rush of recognition and laughter. Like all great art, it also makes us painfully aware of what is unexpressed in us.

If one can say that Dreams of My Russian Summers is "about" the birth of a writer, then Requiem for a Lost Empire is about the struggle to tell or speak the truth. There is a silence that bounds this struggle. The three generations of men in this novel live with the women they love largely in silence. One of the women even has her tongue cut out. Yet somehow, this silence is a state of grace. Most of the time we live in the contiuum between, caught between our superstitious fear of naming things and our compulsion to do so. Makine's efforts to tell the truth, whatever level of truth one wishes to draw from his writing, have produced an exquisitely beautiful and haunting novel.

Andrei Makine adds another laurel to his impressive writing career with the release of Requiem for a Lost Empire. In this short book (250 pages) Makine surveys the past century of change in Russia from the fall of the Czars and the rise of the people, through Stalin and World War II, through the Cold War with its ominous KGB into today with the undercover lives of common men striving to retain the promises of Communism. Makine does this seemingly incredible feat through the eyes of one family - sons and fathers who lived through the various phases of critical change that Russia (empire, USSR, etc) has undergone. In nonlinear fashion he draws multifacted, complex characters with flashbacks and flashforwards in a way that makes this less a history book (though it is valuably one) than the novel it is. And as if that weren't enough, Makine writes with a grace and poetry that suffuse his tale with lasting visuals and ominous grit. That the author left Russia to live in France and has written all his books to date in Frence means that we are also experiencing the work of a master translator. This little book is a gripping masterwork - highly recommended reading.

Roumanian-born poet and brand-new driver Andrei Codrescu hops in a mint red '68 Cadillac and journeys with film crew from Ellis Island to the Golden Gate, making stops in a ravaged and abandoned Detroit, a moving and shaking Chicago, the New Age and Survivalist supermarkets of the southwest, the neon kitsch of Vegas, and finally the odd peace and stability of San Francisco, where Codrescu notes, "From here on out there is nothing but ocean. You can't run any farther. You must turn around to face yourself." The book's main strength is that Codrescu never condescends to his subjects, remaining true to his observation that "what keeps us together is precisely the awed awareness of our differences...."

Towards the end of the book, Codrescu interviews City Lights founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti (an interview which didn't make it into the film documentary, by the way) who compares Henry Miller's and Kerouac's cross-country roadtrip accounts, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare and On the Road, respectively: "...Miller was more focused on the reality of America whereas Kerouac was off in his Catholic consciousness more. When you read On the Road cosely, you see he really wasn't observing the reality in front of him." Other than occasional nostalgic flashbacks to the '60s, Codrescu seems to be genuinely engaged and surprised by what he finds at the well-lit fringes of American society at the end of the 20th century.

If you read Tom Robbins' latest novel closely you'll recognize Codrescu as a faculty member of Timbuktu U. In reality he's on the faculty of LSU. No Shaq in stature, Codrescu came to America in the 60's from the home of Dracula. He didn't learn to drive. Not until over two decades later. Then he hooked up with a camera crew; got his driver's lisence, and toured the same route he originally traveled upon coming to America. (No reference to Eddie Murphy's ugly movie.) Codrescu handles the English language with word play and humor. If you were alive in the Sixties, he takes you there. If you weren't, experience all of the places over again, in the present. Experience the riot torn Detroit twenty years later. Transcend in New Mexico. Sip Coffee in New Orleans. But most of all marvel at the prose that has made Codrescu a regular on NPR.

I miss the now-defunct "Exquisite Corpse," the most original and maybe the best American literary magazine of the 1990s. This greatest hits collection from the Corpse is a pleasure to read. Until I discovered the Corpse, I thought American literature had become the moribound property of academics and the Iowa Writers Finishing School. These essays and poems are wicked fun and thought-provoking.

By the way, the Exquisite Corpse has now become a cyber-publication.

I generally avoid poetry and literary essays, but a friend passed this along to me--and thank heavens she did. If you despair that dead academic writing and predictable journalistic writing represents the best that's out there, despair no more and buy a copy of this witty & bright anthology. Great fun & deeply thought-provoking.

Another beautiful collection from Walker Evans, showing his greatest photos of billboards, movie posters, newspaper headlines, theater marquees, graffiti, street signs, hand-painted shop frotns, covering 1920-1975. You will discover variety of ways to interpret the different layers of meanings from his photos with striking impression. It provides an excellent documentary about American culture. Walker Evans also collected and exhibited signs, sometimes next to his photographs, which brings his work into another level. From letters to graphics, from graphics to signs, sometimes people is becoming helpless under the mass media. Highly recommended for graphics / black and white fans.

Walker Evans SIGNS are unique and wonderful. These images glow in there black and white surroundings. Some of the images are simple and delicate and other are busy and loud...a great mixure.Codrescu's essays give you a delightful walk through of Evans life.Andrei has an original insight... description of these signs from our past.There is excitment in these essays...energy in which Evans must have had as he photographed these images.As you read on you will see Evans attraction to signs. I also enjoyed the layout of the book. The images have room to breath and the text is perfect. I was very happy to add this book with my collection of photography books.

I found this book worth reading as a comprehensive overview on the potential of socio-economic analysis for contemporary societies. It offers a rich methodological introduction and a number of very illuminating case-studies which contrast sharply with the neoclassical orthodoxy. A must for anyone who wants to explore alternative pathways to neoclassical reasoning.

Students of any historical subject are constantly faced with the risk of falling victum of the conventional wisdom of the subject matter at hand. This is especially true when the subject happens to be the second world war. After all does history favor the victors and is it not the victors who earn the privilige to write the history? Indeed it is unfortunate that historians tend to paint events with a broad brush. Perhaps readers do feel more comfortable seeing events in black and white. Wilfried Strik-Strikfelds autobiographical narrative, "Against Stalin & Hitler 1941-1945" is an attempt to question such conventional wisdom. Its author was an officer in the German Army Propaganda department assigned the task of creating one of the greatest, but now forgotten myths of the war, that of the so called Russian Liberation Army. This was in fact a non-existant army created for propaganda purposes during the war. Though it existed only on paper, it did have a leader in the name of General Andrei Vlasov.This book details the authors involvment in the Russian Liberation Movement and his friendship with the said general. Vlaslov was a high ranking Officer in the Soviet Army who after valient resistance, fell prisoner to the Germans while defending Moscow in July of 1942. He later became figurehead of the so called ROA, but more importantly, was the idealogical leader of the estimated 800 millian russians whose opposition to Stalins reign of terror forced them to collaborate with the Nazi Germans. As the book's title implies, the russians found themselves in a particular dilema, can one serve one tyrant to fight another. Throughout the text, Strik-Strikfeldt makes it clear that the russians, mostly prisoners of war, are in truth fighting a war on two fronts, one against Stalin, but still another against the Nazi hierarchy who holds them as racially inferior. In spite of these obsticles, Vlasov and his russians make their objectives clear, that they are woirking for a free and democratic Russia; o! ne opposed to Nazi or Bolshivik tyrany.

For anyone who loves Codrescu's prose, try and tackle his poetry. I have read all of his prose, but find that his poetry is actually the most memorable, and astounding. He has a quickness in his prose, but he is trying to remember to be reader friendly. His poetry moves at the speed of light (or faster, which I know is impossible), and yet balances delicate phrasing, odd tangents, brilliant structure, it is always funny as heck, and finally, deep in a way that some of his shorter prose especially doesn't bother to be. His poetry is like that of a great religious saint for our time -- half-Hermes, and half-Einstein. I love it! He's that bizarre oddity -- a second language poet who is so astonishing in a second language as to be more fluent than most of our very capable poets. Gee whiz, read this book and struggle with it as I have -- you will not feel sad ever again. He is probably the most important living poet in the dada-surrealism lineage, and yet he has crossed over and taken up a kind of Charles Olson-esque study of real places and cities. Dazzling, and unlikely to ever be repeated in this language, Codrescu is our greatest cultural resource, and his poetry is the heart of his heartening project.