I expected a lot more from this biography. It is muddled, confusing and full of inaccuracies. To start with, there seems to be a real problem with patronymics, which shouldn't happen in a book about a Russian man! For example, Pushkin's lover, Anna Petrovna Kern, appears on the index both as "Kern, Anna Petrovna" and "Petrovna, Anna" - as if she were two different people! This is annoying for anybody who knows that "Anna Petrovna" (name+patronymic) means only "Anna, daughter of Peter", and gives no clue as to the person's surname. All right, this may not be the author's fault, but that of the person in care of the index. And yet, the book itself has many mistakes of the kind. For instance, the chapter dedicated to Pushkin's wife, Natalya Nikolaevna Goncharova, opens with the words "It was at a Moscow ball in the winter season of 1828 that Pushkin first saw Natalya IVANOVNA Goncharova (my capitals), then a sixteen-year-old beauty..." This mistake is repeated more than once. In fact, Natalya Ivanovna was Natalya Nikolaevna's mother, Pushkin's mother-in-law. A biography cannot contain such inaccuracies. Besides, Pushkin's numerous love affairs and relationships are insufficiently explicated, and the whole of the narrative is confusing and takes you annoyingly back and forward through the years. A biography should be more accurate and more carefully written. I enjoyed some parts, though - but I'm afraid it was mostly because of my own interest in its subject!

Dostoevsky once said that Alexsandr Pushkin was the quintessential Russian man because of his compassion and empathy for mankind, despite all of the humiliation and misery that he suffered from his friends, family, and the rest of high society during the later years of his life. Although this description of Pushkin may be colored by Dostoevsky's own Russian nationalistic orientation, Pushkin's impact on Russian literature and culture remains undisputed.

The first part of Feinstein's biography was a bit slow due to the monotonous presentation of Pushkin's love interests, one after another. However, a number of erotic poems and epigrams were included that Pushkin wrote during his earlier years which I found particularly amusing for their juvenile and frivolous nature. Considering the aura of sanctity that was built up around Pushkin's reputation as the figurehead of Russian literature after his death, these lyrics help to paint a picture of who the real man actually was. The plot finally picks up towards the end of the book with the introduction of Georges d'Anthés (the man who fatally shot Pushkin in a duel) and the description of d'Anthés' public flirtation with Natalya (Pushkin's wife), only to be followed by his sudden and suspicious marriage to Ekaterina (Natalya's sister). All of these events made Pushkin the focus of public scrutiny and humiliation, which inevitably led to his fatal encounter with d'Anthés. Feinstein presents a lot of evidence in an attempt to shed light on d'Anthés' complicated personality and why things happened as they did. Although most of this evidence is speculatory, it still makes for interesting reading.

I encountered a number of editorial mistakes in this book which were a bit annoying, although they did not overly detract from the continuity of the plot. Some have already been mentioned by previous customer reviewers, such as the listing of Anna Petrovna Kern (one of Pushkin's premarital lovers) and Anna Petrovna as two separate people in the index when they are actually one in the same person. Additionally, Ibrahim Gannibal, Pushkin's legendary Negro great-grandfather who was a general under Peter the Great, was mistakenly identified as his grandfather at various points in the book. Most aggravating for me, however, was the author's habit of going back and forth in time, such that it became difficult to understand the sequence in which events took place.

Overall, I found this book interesting and worth my time reading. Feinstein presents Pushkin's life story in an engaging and readable style that is well-suited for general readers who have little prior knowledge of the man or his works. Nevertheless, the book is detailed enough such that we are able to gain a good understanding of Pushkin's personality and the circumstances that motivated him to write each of his major works.

It is hard to believe that the man regarded by most Russians as the cornerstone of their literature is not better known in the West; trying to understand Russia without knowing anything about Pushkin smacks of trying to understand the English-speaking world without knowing anything about Shakespeare. Ms. Feinstein does an excellent job describing the life and work of this extrordinary man and his effect on his times and the Russian people. The chapter on the events leading up to the fatal duel reads like Greek tragedy and I was alternately fascinated and horrified by the attitudes of Russian high society and the government towards Pushkin and his inevitable confrontation with d'Anthes. My two quibbles are that the epilogue really doesn't tell us much about what happened to the major characters in Pushkin's life after he died and that Ms. Feinstein's proofreader did not catch that Ibrahim Hannibal was Pushkin's maternal great-grandfather, not his maternal grandfather; the relationship is misstated a number of times in the book. These two fairly minor points aside, this is a book I would recommend to anyone wanting to know more about Russia's greatest writer, Blok's "one bright name: Pushkin."

Hofstadter is a brilliant man, with no ear for poetry. One aspect of human intelligence that computers have some hope of matching is pattern recognition. This, perhaps, has led computer scientist Hofstadter to value pattern (rhyme, meter) in poetry at the expense of sense and, above all, tone. Both in this translation and in his fascinating and infuriating "Le Ton Beau de Marot" he shows a near-complete obliviousness to the nuances of tone that words bring with them. Try the Falen translation instead.

My best advice to you (the prospective reader) would be to consult the complete New York Times Review before even thinking about buying this so-called translation. Mr. Hofstadter has wide-ranging interests, and his enthusiasm is laudable, but it is sadly not married to a disciplined or artistic sensibility. He has no ear for language; he thinks that poetry is merely a matter of sing-song rhythm and relentless rhyme; he has no sense of the magical qualities of certain words in certain combinations. This is an amateur's hack-job of a translation, made more egregious by the arrogance of the translator.

Some of the reviews above as well as the NYT book review blasted the work for being bad poetry. I would agree that, yes, Hofstadter may not have the greatest ear for artistic language and the translation often sounds heavy-handed in English, whereas every single word in the original is light as a feather. As I recall, DF acknowledges the drawbacks of his version in his intro and praises some other work, notably Falen. Nevertheless, being fluent in both English and Russian, I think this translation is an incredible achievement. While the James Falen translation is usually better in language, what Hofstadter has done here - faithfully mimic every single beat of the rhyme - is enourmously difficult. It is by far the best way for a foreigner to see how the verses really sound in the original.

Sure, Pushkin had fun with his Russian, and why shouldn't a translator carry that playfulness into his translation. But damn, I found it way too distracting. The introduction by Hofstadter was very interesting and conveyed his love and dedication to this novel; my hopes were high for an enjoyable ride. But I found the novel too dificult to follow, and the clever translation distracting. Hofstadter himself recommends a translation by Falen, and I concur, finding it much easier to follow.

Hofstadter's translation of the great Russian poem "Eugene Onegin" deserves credit on two counts. First, it is a modern, lyrical, jovial and admittedly singsong (due to the author's strict adherence to the original iambic tetrameter) translation of Pushkin's masterwork. It is a translation to be read aloud, to be shared with one you love. Second, in its preface it holds a concise statement of Hofstadter's extensive thoughts (see "Le Ton Beau De Marot") on the art, whimsy, folly and beauty of translation itself. It has been mentioned that Hofstadter looks down on Nabokov's "translation", but this is not entirely without cause. Nabokov's stodgy literal gloss of "Onegin", eschewing meter and rhyme, serves as a dictionary and a deathblow. Pushkin's poem is vibrant and alive in Russian; Hofstadter boldly suggests that we english-speakers may also experience this life denied by Nabokov. This book will teach you something about poetry, something about translation, and hopefully give you a feel for what Pushkin's Russia might have been like.

Eugene Onegin is the pinnacle of Russian literature. This hundred-page poem is embedded in Russian brains. Imagine high school nerds repeating the "dead parrot" skit from Monty Python. Now imagine that for all Python skits, the whole population could do that. Eugene Onegin is ubiquitous in Russia. A tale of love and longing, fair maid Tatyana pursues her Romeo. "Romeo" is named Eugene Onegin and he is a decent enough playboy prince. The story is classic, particularly the sections of dialog between Tatyana and Eugene. School children should study their exchanges, which would fit neatly into a forty-minute class. Perhaps, in doing so, literature would score rare points over "Malcolm in the Middle". I read this poem out of admiration for Hofstadter, the translator, a cognitive scientist, Pulitzer Prize winner and all around Einstein. "Godel, Escher, Bach" (1979) earned Hofstadter immortality at a young age. If you wish to think deeply, let Hofstadter guide you with his science and philosophy. Hofstadter claims the definitive translation of Eugene Onegin is that of James Fallen. Thus, Hofstadter was liberated to translate liberally and with personal pinache. Admittedly, I haven't memorized the stanzas, so perhaps something was lost in translation. Nonetheless, I'll guarantee that you will finish this poem if you make it half way through. Shakespeare himself would not complain at losing a few days of English instruction to Russia's Pushkin, as the conclusion brings a smile to the dead.

The book distorts the facts, full of lies

This book is fascinating, straight to the point, based on real facts, accurate, profound and moving. Those who review it otherwise are fools undoubtebly!

As the title suggests, this book is a historical novel drawing on current and contemporary Armenian experience. The `pogrom' however refers to the savage attacks and massacres of the Armenians of Sumgait, an industrial city near Baku, perpetrated by maraudering Azerbaijani gangs in February 1988.

This is by no means a cool, detached, journalistic account of the three days of hell experienced by the Armenians of Sumgait. Shahinyan' s book is passionate and often dramatic and moving portrayal of the tragedy as it unfolds. It traces the policy of genocide that guided the Azerbaijani brutalities, from their inception at the highest levels of party and government authority in Baku and Moscow, as a conspiracy by anti-Perestroika forces to discredit and destroy Gorbachev by " teaching the too independently minded Armenians a good lesson" while at the same time "solving the Karabagh problem by keeping it for Azerbaijan." We meet the local Baku conspirators, the pampered and corrupt bureaucrats, at work planning their criminal deeds, working out the details of how where and when the massacrers should begin and, later still, the common street criminals who carry out the plan by cold-blooded murder, rape and looting.

The novel's main hero is Aramais, the elderly hardworking shoe repairer who lives and works in Sumgait. He is a survivor from yet another genocide in another place: The 1915 Turkish Genocide of the Armenians! His life is vividly portrayed as the story unfolds; we get vivid and shocking flashbacks to his childhood memories of massacre and deportation in Western Armenia, of Turkish soldiers raping, killing and pillaging, while he is protecting a young Armenian girl from the intoxicated and hysterical Azeri mob. During various flashbacks we get to know his wife Susana and short glimpses of the bitter experience of deportation of both their parents and their death in exile in Bulgaria. We see him in action in the Second World War, earning a medal for bravery. Shahinyan is remarkably Solzhenitsin-like in his portrayal of life in Stalinist labor camps, its brutality, waste and sheer stupidity, as experienced by Aramais after the war. But again and again it is the flashbacks to 195 and Aramais's experiences of genocide then and now that draw the unmistakable parallel and similarities between the two events: That on both occasions they were planned state policy to massacre, pillage and deport the Armenians from their ancestral lands when they stood up for their rights and freedom -- the Pan-Turkist easy "solution to the Armenian problem" as applied to western Armenia in 1915 and to Karabagh now, in 1988!

And we see some of the young protagonists of this resistance struggle for survival and freedom in the suffocatingly tense atmosphere of Sumgait: Aramais's son Arshik and his young sweetheart Bella, for example. We meet Dr. Mesropyan, Bella' s father and one of the top surgeons in Azerbaijan, in his vain endeavor to meet the party chief in Sumgait in order to stop the conspiracy! Also are portrayed many Armenian families hiding with fear behind their fortified doors in their homes, saying to Arshik "we don't know anywhere safe to go to!" And we witness with Arshik many scenes of burnt-out and looted Armenian homes and ruined lives as he desperately seeks them out to warn.

Above all it is his treatment of the setting in Sumgait that deserves praise. He is a master of suspense as well as dramatic and abrupt climaxes. He is meticulously vivid and realistic in his detailed portrayal of all the characters, both heroes and villains. The result is masterly and panoramic sketch of Soviet life in general and Sumgait in particular; the ordinary people in their daily lives of pain and little pleasures, their friendships, petty prejudices, and the gradual buildup of hysteria, against the backdrop of a crumbling society, and its utterly corrupt and immoral elite in its last dying days. This is a profoundly and thoroughly pessimistic book reflecting the tortured soul of the author in its quest for answers to deeply disturbing questions about man' s social existence in general and Armenian suffering in particular.

A highly readable and enjoyable book (despite its unfortunate editing errors!) with some intelligent insights into aspects of Armenian and Soviet history -- the origins of the Karabagh problem, the collusion between Kemalist Turkey and Stalinist Russia and the loss of Nakhichevan (and the Azeri success in ethnically cleansing it of its majority Armenian population) as well as issues relating to Western Armenia. Thoroughly recommended reading for all interested in contemporary Armenian literature and history.

The title of this book may be a bit misleading to some hoping to read a book about the formation of a single American Orthodox Church. I thought it would be much more about ways to go about achieving that goal, and to a certain extent, it is. The thing that I didn't realize was that the book is largely comprised of long quotations from canon law as well as from civic court rulings about church administration. The last several chapters were quite interesting, but the rest of the book will not be appealing to most readers.

This book probably wouldn't even be interesting to most Orthodox Christians since it primarily involves the Orthodox in North America (about 5 million people.) This is a very scholarly book (and quite an excellent one for what it is), but I just think that this isn't what most people will expect. It is worthwhile to read if you are interested in canon law, but probably not interesting to you if you are not. As good as this is about its subject, it is DEFINATELY not the place to start reading about the Orthodox Church.

Beautiful photography and interesting text, but I was interested in the actual art as painted by the elephants, but there is very little of that. Mostly pictures of jungles. If you like that you will like the book. If you want to see the acutual artwork you will be very dissapointed.