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Book reviews for "Rodimstev,_Aleksandr" sorted by average review score:

Mazurkas, Poemes, Impromptus and Other Works for Piano
Published in Paperback by Dover Pubns (1991)
Authors: Alexander Scriabin and Aleksandr Nikolayevich Scriabin
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Some of the most gorgeous works in the piano repertoire
Dover publishes complete works of many composers, and they did pianists a huge favor by compiling the works of Scriabin into several volumes of music. Scriabin, a "bridge" composer between the 19th and 20th Century, composed romantic yet modernistic works sometimes reminiscent of Chopin. His later work was far more dense and individualistic. Unfortunately, he died in his 40's, but, like the short-lived Schubert,he left a considerable volume of works for the piano. The other Dover volumes are the Sonatas and the Preludes and Etudes. Logically, they put other minor works (nocturnes, dances, etc) into this volume.

If you are a skilled pianist, try the Op. 28 Fantasie. This work, sadly, is rarely recorded but is one of the most incredibly gorgeous things ever written for piano. The only other copy of this I own is in a Hungarian edition not available in the US, so rejoice if you play piano.

Dover prints music that is easy to read and the editing is usually blameless. This book is no exception. Highly recommended for serious piano students.

.....as well.
What the above review failed to mention is that the "Muzurkas, Poems, and Impromptues" book contains all of Scriabin's piano music excepting that which is contained in the "Preludes and Etudes" and the "Piano Sonata's" books. All three of these books are published by Dover and are not altered to death buy rotten editors. Comprehensive editions of composer's works are very valuable and often a huge oversight in the unusually chopy realm of sheet music. The book is also made as good as paperbacks get.

Overlooked composer Scriabin's musical thoughts in print!!

This collection of mostly unrelated works by AlexanderNicolyavich Scriaban (1872-1915) is most undoubtedly the crown jewelof Twentieth-Century piano music; yet it is almost totally overlooked historically as well as musically. It represents not his ordered compositions, as do his preludes and etudes, but rather his sporadic, sometimes psychotic thoughts; it is a veritable musical diary of the very bizarre and mystical life of the great Russian enigma. It belongs on the shelf of any serious music student, especially those of Russian music, for in this myriad of masterworks are the very core of the underappreciated and often entirely overlooked Alexander N. Scriabin.


Scriabin, a Biography
Published in Paperback by Dover Pubns (1996)
Author: Faubion Bowers
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Magnificent - a lovingly crafted insight
A lovingly crafted insight into one of the greatest of musical minds. Extensive excerpts from letters, postcards, and notebooks yields a startling account of Scriabins progression from child prodigy to poet, philosopher, and composer. However this is not just a biography, it's presentation is akin to a Scriabin Sonata, with structure yet diversity and surprise. A joy for all music lovers and a must for Scriabin fans.

A Window into 19th Century Russia
Mr. Bower's biography of Scriabin is more than a biography. It is at the same another window into the life of the more priviledged classes of prerevolutionary Russia before WWI...a virtual syllabus of names and personalities to be investigated in further readings. It is a lively illustration of a lost culture, a worthwhile addition to the cultural picture painted in Massey's THE FIREBIRD.


Three Pearls of Number Theory
Published in Paperback by Dover Pubns (1998)
Authors: Aleksandr Iakovlevich Khinchin, Aleksandra Khinchin, and F. Bagemihl
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Come on, professors, write more like this!
This book is actually a letter from a Russian professor to a student sent off to war. It's short, but won't be an easy read. These are "pearls" but getting the oyster open is going to be tough. It's also remarkable for it's candid revelation of the mathematical process of professional practitioners at various universities in different countries. The first pearl is about a young student name van der Waerden. Yep, the guy who went on to prove so many results in Abstract Algebra and wrote the classic text on the subject influencing Artin and Noether. It's interesting to note, van der Waerden used finite differences in his proof recounted in the first pearl, and he's the only author I know that included finite differences in his abstract algebra text book. Both the candid historical confessions and the conversational exposition make this a great book. It's style and methods should be widely imitated. Come on, professors, write more like this! Future archaeologist of the 20th century will be glad this document is available for it's revelation of the habits of homo professorus mathematicus.

If you like number theory you I think you will enjoy this bo
A Y Khinchin was one of the greatest mathematicians of the first half of the twentieth century. He was also famous as a teacher and communicator. Fortunately, several of the books he wrote are still in print in English translations, published by Dover. Like William Feller and Richard Feynman he combines a complete mastery of his subject with an ability to explain clearly without sacrificing mathematical rigour.

This is a short book of three chapters: Chapter 1. Van der Waerden's theorem on arithmetic progressions. Chapter 2. The Landau-Shnirelmann hypothesis and Mann's theorem. Chapter 3. An elementary solution of Waring's problem.

These are all difficult problems from the theory of numbers and I think that the elementary proofs that Khinchin describes here are original. This book is a challenging but enjoyable read.

I also recommend his other book on number theory: "Continued Fractions".


Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory
Published in Paperback by Dover Pubns (1957)
Authors: Alexander I. Khinchin and Aleksandr Iakovlevich Khinchin
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A clear exposition of Shannon's results by a great mathemati
A Y Khinchin was one of the great mathematicians of the first half of the twentieth century. His name is is already well-known to students of probability theory along with A N Kolmogorov and others from the host of important theorems, inequalites, constants named after them. He was also famous as a teacher and communicator. The books he wrote on Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory, Statistical Mechanics and Quantum Statistics are still in print in English translations, published by Dover. Like William Feller and Richard Feynman he combines a complete mastery of his subject with an ability to explain clearly without sacrificing mathematical rigour.

In his "Mathematical Foundations" books Khinchin develops a sound mathematical structure for the subject under discussion based on the modern theory of probability. His primary reason for doing this is the lack of mathematically rigorous presentation in many textbooks on these subjects.

This book contains two papers written by Khinchin on the concept of entropy in probability theory and Shannon's first and second theorems in information theory - with detailed modern proofs. Like all Khinchin's books, this one is very readable. And unlike many recent books on this subject the price is very cheap. Two minor complaints are: lack of an index, and typesetting could be improved.

More rigorous version of Shannon 1948 paper
Shannon's paper is great. Easy to read (though many people misunderstand many concepts - I may too) but lacks mathematical rigor. This book has redone several points that Shannon made but more accurately. It requires ergodic theory and measure theory to follow every detail, but some parts may be usable even without much background. I don't think the book is perfectly edited, but I know I paid too little for the knowledge I gained from this book.


Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art
Published in Paperback by University of California Press (1999)
Authors: Vitaly Komar, Aleksandr Melamid, and Joann Wypijewski
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Fascinating Look into Tastes in Art
This book will get anyone thinking about what qualifies as "art". Have you ever gone to a modern art museum or picked up a modern art magazine and wondered "how can anyone call that art?" Well this book will get you thinking about questions like that. Using scientific polling methods 2 Russian immigrants canvased the U.S. to find out what the average American considers art.

The results are exactly the kind of works most working modern artists or their patrons would be dismayed over. Get this book. It is a fascinating and entertaining read. One interesting note from the book - the editor of The Nation said that when they published the results of this poll it drew an avalanche of reader mail. It generated the largest reader response of anything they'd published in the history of that magazine to date. Several newspapers interviewed owners of prominant NYC art galleries as well as some prominant artists. All of them were horified by the results of this poll. One commentator sniffed the poll just proves Americans are boors when it comes to art - prefering only the safest, most banal subjects. What is interesting is that the book shows the results of this poll were duplicated in many other countries around the globe. Countries as diverse as Kenya and Iceland showed their own polls duplicated the preferences of the average American - i.e. a liking for landscapes with peaceful blue skies.

The book reproduces in full the entire questionaire used by the polling company along with an interview with Momar and Kelamid. The two Russians also gained notoriety by creating pictures of each countries most-preferred and least-preferred paintings. Each painting had the canvas divied up to match the percentages shown in the poll that respondents wanted (or didn't want in the case of the 'Least Preferred' paintings). Thus if the poll showed 65% preferred landscapes with a blue sky then 65% of the painting surface had a blue sky.

Interviews as well as commentary on the nature of art and what this might mean also fill the book. There is even a chapter by one of my favorite modern-day philosophers - Arthur C. Danto (I have several of his books). He asks the question "Can It Be The 'Most Wanted Painting' Even if Nobody Wants It?"

The results in this book lead to many questions. Not the least of these is 'what is art?' and 'what does this say about human nature?'. One article from the Jan/Feb 2002 issue of American Spectator illustrates this problem very well. It seems a few months ago a very famous photographer was holding a one-man exhibit at a London gallery. He is quite famous for the nauseating and offensive subject matter of his work. That night he gathered together the cigarrette butts, empty paper cups, and other assorted trash from the opening-night party and "artfully" arranged it in a pile in a corner and took a picture of it. The pile was promptly announced by a London art-critic to be worth at least 5K (in pounds). Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell the janitor that night that the pile was art, not trash. So you can guess the ending of this story.

I recount this to make a point. That is, this book will shed some light on why so many people have trouble - even the U.S. Supreme Court - on saying exactly what Art is. Get this book. It is fun and fascinating look into not only the tastes in art around the world but also a window into the science of polls and polling.

Wonderful
This is one of the coolest art books I've seen, Komar and Melamid are geniuses! The whole idea art designed to please isn't that new but the idea using polls and statistics is. By using a random survey from several countries ( THe USA France China KenYa Russia Ukraine ect) they create each countries most and least wanted painting and take you through a wonderful romp discussing what art and expression and stuff are really all about. I gave this sucker out as X-mas presents! I can't reccommend it highly enough. Buy everything by Komar and Melamid...even their souls.... look that up on the web.

The Art of Statistical Culture
It's hard to express how fantastic this book really is in a review. Komar and Melamid's paintings, which threatened, for a time, to turn the art world on its ear, are supreme farces on what statistics can tell us. Obviously the principle is consiously flawed. The artist's interpretation of the statistical data is largely abstracted, but the paintings themselves are superb and outragiously funny takes on national culture. The question of the book is "What do people want in their art?" It isn't likely that you'll find a more interesting, fascinating, and entertaining answer than "Painting by Numbers."


Utopia in Power
Published in Paperback by Summit Books (1988)
Authors: Michel Heller, Mikhail Geller, and Aleksandr M. Nekrich
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Makes you appreciate the U.S. Constitution all the more
Clear and compelling indictment of the most inhuman social system devised by humans. This account of the Soviet Union's history illustrates the danger of a one party system and the inhumanity of big government.


Eugene Onegin
Published in Paperback by Ardis Publishers (1993)
Authors: Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin and Walter W. Arndt
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don't be intimidated by idea of novel in verse
I am not a poetry lover but I found this book to be delightful. It can be appreciated simply as a good read. This particular translation made it very accessible, very engaging. I was swept up by the period detail provided by the author. If you like books with dashing but jaded heroes and strong minded heroines this is for you.


The First Circle
Published in Paperback by HarperCollins (paper) (1990)
Author: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
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The First Circle
What makes The First Circle such a great book (the best I've read by Solzhenitsyn) is how he reduces a political system and economic ideology to individual choices. It was a system built upon greed, jealousy, selfish pragmatism and fear, the vanity of Stalin, the petty rivalry between commanding officers, the desperate connivance of a prisoner who will turn against his fellow man in order to better his own lot. In other words, humanity.

The consequences were also human: the loss of the prime years of a man's life, a life without the love of a woman, a father worrying about the fate of his young daughter thousands of miles away. Solzhenitsyn does a masterful job of rendering the real world behind philosophy and ideology, the world the USSR lost sight of when they placed ends before means.

In the end, what is perhaps most frightening is that the face of evil is so banal.

If you like to read...read this
I was first introdced to Solzhenitsyn's works when I was a freshman in high school, far too many years ago in a little town. The book was the Volume 1 of The Gulag Archipelago. It was really an eye-opener for me in so many ways, given that it was the first "really serious" book that I'd read.

I believe that Solzhenitsyn is the best writer of the 20th century, or at least he's the top writer I've read so far (and I've read a lot of books). Maybe that's influenced by my early exposure, but I don't think so; I find his works just as compelling now as I did then.

The First Circle is one of his most "accessible" works (that is, you can just jump in and start reading) and probably one of his best. A very compelling story; his portraits of the various vile creatures of the Soviet government have been shown to be quite accurate, and the way the various plots intertwine and are resolved is wonderful.

The First Circle gives great insight into a culture totally foreign to most US citizens, as the book's a mixture of spy novel, guide to life in a Gulag camp, and brief introduction to Soviet society of the 1950s. A depressing place to be sure, but fascinating. Well worth reading.

Immense
Another triumph by Solzenitsyn. A deeply humane book, in which the author weaves several tales around the central thread of a Soviet research establishment where the researchers are political prisoners. The stories in themselves are gripping, but what again holds the attention (as in the author's other works)is Solzhenitsyn's deeply profound portayal of the human cost of the repressive system, and how deeply it affected all of the citizens of the RSFSR, however exalted or mundane their place within that system. Particularly interesting were the depiction of Stalin and his relationships with his lackies, and the inner workings of Lubyanka Prison in central Moscow. The ending has a thought-provoking sting in the tale for us in the West. Recommended.


Cancer Ward
Published in Hardcover by Random House Trade (1989)
Authors: Nicholas Bethell, Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, and David Burg
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This much overlooked novel is perhaps Solzhenitsyn's best.
Cancer Ward is often overshadowed by its predecessor, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and its successor, the immense memoir, The Gulag Archipelago. While the worldly impact of those two works is perhaps greater, the aesthetic power of Cancer Ward is stronger than both of those works. The story is poignant and powerful, reaching out and probing deeply into the essential questions that are never answered by not only Soviet society, but western culture as a whole. The religious message that emerges is stunning and unique, recalling the works of Dostoyevsky. Overall, this is an excellent book, and any reader who enjoyed One Day or Gulag will be blown away by this work.

This is a deeply moving work, one of Solzenhitsyn's best.
Having read a good bit of Solzhenitsyn's books, I can safely say that this is the pinnacle of his work. It simultaneously examines how people cope with the loss of freedom (to the Soviet state and the cancer ward), with the death that surrounds them, and with their own mortality. Through the whole work, too, through death and triumph over disease, runs Solzhenitsyn's recurring theme of the survival and growth of the human spirit under terrible conditions, seen as the main character and those around him realize former errors and deficiencies of character and seek to redeem themselves by doing good for others. I would highly recommend this book to all readers of Solzhenitsyn and, really, anyone.

Accurate depiction of the world of the cancer patient
Having just finished reading it for the third time, I believe that Cancer Ward is a very fine novel, rich at many levels: in its depiction of Soviet provincial society in 1955, a poor society just emerging from Stalinism; in its portrayal of many separate characters (doctors, nurses, patients, hospital workers) in that society, many of whose lives have been permanently damaged by the terror and the GULAG, but in different ways; and, as I know from personal experience, in its depiction of the isolated world of the cancer patient, from which the rest of society is seen dimly, as though through dirty glass. In spite of all medical progress, the basics of this world have not changed much in 50 years: the core treatments are still surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, and the side effects both long and short term can still be brutal.

The ending of the book will disappoint those who want a happy ending, or just an ending with all the loose ends tied up. In real life, though, loose ends usually stay loose. My thought is that Solzhenitshyn intended the reader to understand that for the characters and the society who are so damaged by the past there can be no happy endings; the best they can hope for is to continue from day to day, grasping at whatever happiness briefly comes their way.


The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956
Published in Paperback by Perennial (22 January, 2002)
Author: Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
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Bombastic Brilliant Unforgetable
What ever faults "Gulag Archipelago" may have, it is a monumental and important work. For anyone who does not know the meaning of the title, "Gulag" is the Russian word for prison, and an archipelago is, of course, a chain of islands. The idea behind this is that the Soviet concentration camp system under Lenin and Stalin were like an island of prisons spread all over the Soviet Union.

The content of "Gulag Archipelago" is quite extraordinary. Solzhenitsyn includes countless anecdotes of prisoners and their families in various phases of arrest, interrogation, imprisonment, slave labor, death, or release. He buttresses these stories with statistics, and with his own personal narrative of his years in the Gulag. The information in this book is simply staggering, not only for the cruelty and evil it describes but also the folly. The Soviet government murdered indiscriminately across all lines of race, class, and gender. In many cases, it murdered the most brilliant and productive members of its society--the very people who could have built it into something great.

Many people take umbrage with Solzhenitsyn's style, which involves a lot of ranting and run-on footnotes. Personally, I find his narrative interesting and invigorating. Solzhenitsyn's narrative is vigorous, untrammeled and loaded with sarcasm. While many find this gimmicky or uncultured, it helped buoy me through the unbearable sadness of the book's subject matter.

Obviously this book isn't for everybody and it requires a considerable degree of fortitude to get through it. But I think it is essential in all our lives to read this book or one similar to it.

Death to Communism!
It is a rare occurrence in the history of the human race when a truly great man rises up from the masses and passes on to the rest of us an eternal truth or knowledge that will serve as a testament against the forces of evil. Alexander Solzhenitsyn must certainly rank as one of these great men. All people who live in freedom should speak his name with reverence, and all should read the unabridged edition of 'The Gulag Archipelago,' the author's indictment against the most evil creation mankind ever fashioned: Marxist-Leninist Communism.

Like other great men, Solzhenitsyn's early life gave little indication of the monumental importance he would one day achieve. But one day, while serving as an officer in the Soviet army during WWII, something happened to our author that happened to so many others under the Soviet regime: Solzhenitsyn was arrested for insubordination, sentenced to eight years, and thrown into the gaping maw of the Gulag prison system. Unfortunately for the memory of the 'Great Father' (read Joey Stalin), this obscure army officer lived to tell the tale of all he saw and heard during his imprisonment. The result is the voluminous three volume series presented here in translation. 'The Gulag Archipelago' serves as both an indictment of the evil Soviet regime and as a memorial for the untold millions who died in the camps.

The overarching theme of this book is the process, from start to finish, of internment in the Gulag system. Starting with the dreaded 'knock in the middle of the night,' the author traces the nightmare of incarceration through the interrogation, the sentencing, the transportation to the prison camps, the grinding work conditions of the camps, and the eventual release into eternal exile or tentative freedom. Solzhenitsyn repeatedly delves into historical analysis, biography, journalism, philosophical musings, and literature to present his account. What emerges is page after page of heartrending suffering that is nearly incomprehensible to any sane human mind. The endless accounts of cruelty sicken the soul and should strike anyone who thinks communism is a great system of government deaf and dumb.

Volume one begins the harrowing odyssey into madness, outlining Solzhenitsyn's own arrest, the endless waves of people that fed the prison system, the interrogation procedures used to elicit false confessions to meaningless crimes, the dreaded Soviet criminal code containing the notorious 'Article 58' under which millions went to jail as political prisoners, the disintegration of the Soviet legal system to what basically amounted to a rubber stamp type of sentencing, and the transportation of prisoners via train to the eastern reaches of the Soviet empire.

Volume two deals mainly with camp life, with all of the trials and travails a person faced and how people struggled to survive. It is here we learn about Stalin's canal building projects and the thousands who died to fulfill the sick dreams of a ruthless sociopath. We see the horrible rations prisoners were forced to survive upon while having their ears filled with disgusting propaganda about how their work was important in helping to create the worker's paradise. The second volume also contains a history about how the gulag system emerged and how it spread, a discussion about loyal communists who so internalized the party belief system that they refused to believe Stalin sold them out, and chapters about the different types of people confined to the gulag (trusties, thieves, kids, women, and politicals).

Volume three focuses mostly on prisoner defiance of the terrible conditions in the prisons, discussing escape attempts (especially Georgi Tenno, a hero to the human race and indefatigable in his disobedience of the Soviet authorities), and outright prison revolts where the entire population of a prison banded together against the common evil. We then see Solzhenitsyn's release into exile and his ultimate 'rehabilitation' after the death of Stalin and the rise of Khrushchev and his 'moderate' reforms. The series ends with a call for more investigations into Soviet atrocities committed in the gulags.

No summary could completely outline the scope of this book; so enormous is the amount of detail held in these pages. The reader is tirelessly assailed with the names of those butchered under the hammer and sickle. Predictably, most of the blame for these murders falls on Comrade Stalin, author of the kulakization pogroms, the endless political purges, and the continuous sufferings inflicted on the various peoples under his control. Always referring to this beast in the most insolent and sarcastic tones imaginable, Solzhenitsyn rightly calls Stalin 'Satan.' Hitler was a mere schoolboy when held up to the unholy terror of the 'great' Dzhugashvili.

Still, one gets the sense of the majesty and power of the great Russian people in these accounts. Nothing will keep these people down for long. Everything the camps threw at these many of these wondrous creatures failed to break their spirit. They figured out how to lessen the back breaking labor of the camps, learned how to stay alive on rations barely fit for a dog, struggled to escape the chains that bound them to the death camps. Although the author laments the docility of those serving sentences, there are enough tales of bravery and defiance to warm the most cynical heart.

I highly recommend reading the unabridged version of 'The Gulag Archipelago.' There used to be an abridged version of some 900 pages floating around, but only the 2000-page edition brings home the full scope of the evils of communism. Accessibility is a problem, but stare into the eyes of Yelizaveta Yevgenyevna Anichkova on page 488 in the first volume and tell me her memory does not deserve an effort on your part to read every page of one of the most important books ever written.

A Work that Makes You Think - "Thank God I wasn't there!"
I read this work while doing research in preparation for my senior Western Civilization presentation. Most students struggle to locate primary sources of any merit, it was not so when I found The Gulag Archipelago. Not only did I find that it provided me with an understanding of the Soviet penal system, Solzhenitsyn also manages to bring his words to life using his own experiences and recognizing his own faults. I would recommend this book to any student who didn't mind wading through long tirades and could fully appreciate the style the author uses to make his statement.


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