This has 23 of his best ballads, with excercises in comprehension and everything. A good read, if you can get the accompanying CD.

When the book first arrived on the shelves of the library that employs me, most of my coworkers agreed they would never read the book to children. In fact, there were bets being placed as to how long it would last before some parent complained about the content. But, I'm here to say that Manneken Pis: A Simple Story of a Boy Who Peed on a War does more than just rely on the laughs the images of a peeing boy conjures. While I cannot vouch for the validity of the history lesson the book provides (not my best subject), I can vouch that the story engrossed the fourth grade classes I read it to. The story starts off as any other folk tale might, with a beautiful family in a beautiful town where everyone is happy. Soon the war strikes, and the book focuses most on the viciousness of war, showing the soldiers as pseudo-human gremlin types, and the ill effects it has on the town. The child, torn from his parents wanders the streets and in a moment of dire emergency, relieves himself from the top of the town wall causing the soldiers to break into a laughter so fierce that they fall asleep from exhaustion. When they wake up, no one can remember why the war started, and the little boy who peed on a war becomes a town hero, complete with a bronze statue named after him. The book's illustrations are simple and colorful and work great in this situation. Anything too realistic could have caused far more controversy than the book needs. Highly recommended to show children that war is bad, laughing and pausing to think is good, and sometimes, if a person REALLY has to go, they REALLY have to go.

For anyone, like me, more familiar with Nabokov's more famous English work (in my case Bend Sinister, Lolita, Pale Fire), the first Russian stories in this collection might come as something of a shock. Inevitably, being translated, they lose what was presumably their magic in Russian; and as the joy of Nabokov is language (what he does with it; how he expresses meaning through his manipulation of it, rather than ideas or narrative; how he is its most beautiful exponent of the century), one is left with a feeling of frustration adn dissatisfaction. There is little of the callous burlesque which invade his most delicate artifacts. 'The Aurelian' could almost have been written by Simenon. Others have the nostalgic melancholy of Turgenev. This is all very nice, but it's not Nabokov.

And yet, it is. 'Cloud, Castle, Lake', for example, combines the familiar Nabokovian disjunction between elegance of style and content of the most horrific viciousness. There is a definite increase in pleasure when one gets to the English stories - the tone, created through language, in unmistakably Nab - narrators, resembling Nabokov in suavity, taste and intelligence, are actually feckless idiots, with their creator smiling behind them.

There is, though, very little to smile about in these stories. Spanning (in composition)the period of Stalinism, Nazism, World War II and McCarthy era USA, they detail the complete derailment of the Enlightenment project in our century. Each time rationality, the power of the intellect or the artist is asserted, it is always denied by exile, totalitarianism, madness, deformity, conformity, self-destructive urges, unknowable terrors, but most importantly, by knowledge of the deception inherent in writing. Each story begins with an assertion, and the confident possibility of giving expression to the world, and ends with these values rigorously distorted, fragmented, smashed and broken by that world.

And yet it is only through the mind that we can escape this evil, through nostalgia, recreation, possibility, artistry, transcendence. 'Lance' is an extraordinary, baffling, ambivalent parable highlighting this. Is its vision of the sublime delusive? Does this matter if we can fumble towards imagining it?

Almost every character in these stories languishes in some kind of prison, trying to escape, seek epiphany in some way connected with the mind, whether it's a simple, sensual appreciation of beauty (a fluttering butterfly; a reflection of a cloud on a lake), or a quiet kindness to someone else, helping us escape our crushing solipsism. 'Signs and Symbols' is the key story, its deceptive simplicity masking untold anguish.

I would be lying if I said I didn't miss the astonishment of watching Nabokov in full flight, but there is so much wealth in these stories, which require untold rereading - not just to extract meaning, but to savour again, and again, their remarkable beauty, their deadpan comedy, their impotent apprehension of terror and brutality (although there is a persistant failure in the portrayal of women) - to remind us why Nabokov is the century's greateat.

Vladimir Lossky was a reputed Orthodox theologian. Most of his books were published postumously and they reveal the depth and extent of his knowledge of Christian thought. And this book is no exception. The present volume was originally written in French and then translated to English. Almost all the fundmental principles of Christian doctrine are dealt with in this book. The book contains a Prologue, a Postscript and four chapters dealing with different dogmas of the Church. His theological arguments are solidly based on Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church. Since the emphasis is on correctness, the language has become cumbersome and understanding sometimes difficult. He has some familiarity with the Indian understanding of God which he occasionally brings in.

This will remain a valuable book of all time. For a student of Eastern Orthodox Theology this is a must read.

In 1954 the Australian Labour Party seemed poised for electoral victory. Just before the election the senior KGB officer in the Soviet Embassy defected to Australian authorities. A short time after his defection armed Soviet Body Guards tried to take his wife back to Russia but were stopped from doing so at the Darwin airport. Photos of a distressed Mrs Petrov being dragged across the airport tarmac by two Soviet Goons hit the front pages of all major newspapers.

Petrov?s defection was one of the more significant defections of Soviet Agents in the post war period. Amongst the documents he brought with him two caused fireworks. One was a briefing that had been prepared for the Soviets by an employee of the Labour Opposition. Another was a document prepared by a leading journalist.

The conservative Prime Minister Menzies who had seemed poised for certain defeat immediately established a Royal Commission into Communism in Australia. The existence of documents prepared in the office of the leader of the opposition was a tremendous embarrassment. In the following election Menzies was able to win.

These events became known as the Petrov affair. The loss of the 1954 election led to the Labour leader Evatt having what was probably some form of mental collapse. He from this point made a series of errors of judgement that led to the party splitting and it was out of office for another 18 years.

The fortuitous juxtaposition of the events have led writers on the left to believe that the whole affair was orchestrated by the Liberals for their short term political advantage. Manne has gone through all the sources, some of which at the time of writing had just come into the public domain.

His book is a convincing argument for the fact that no conspiracy existed. Rather Menzies simply capitalised on chance events that occurred in a miraculous way to get him out of a deep political hole.

Manne?s argument is convincing. The book itself is reasonably amusing. Petrov himself was a chronic alcoholic and it seems clear that he was one of the more incompetent KGB operatives to be let loose on the Western World. Despite his incompetence he was able to provide the Australian secret service with an account of what had happened in the past when KGB operatives womanised and drank less, and as a result could do some work. The political events around the affair have meant that most Australians have never released that the defection was in fact of some importance apart from what it did to destroy the electoral fortunes of the Australian Labour Party.

Although price prohibitive, this is a good work for engineers getting introduced to plasmas and their industrial applications.

Professor Diment's book moves from biography to literary intrigue quickly and delightfully. The intrigue itself, of course, has been out in the open for quite a while---that Pnin, the stodgy and stumbling professor, was inspired by one of Vladimir Nabokov's colleagues at Cornell, Marc Szeftel.

There's plenty of material on that in the book, but the real treat are the stories on university politics, the strange and shimmering links between art and the "real", the compassionate sketches of very odd characters (including Szeftel himself, as well as Nabokov's first biographer, a Kinbote-like figure), and some seriously funny endnotes. _Pnin_ ends triumphantly, and so does Diment's _Pniniad_, with the reader discovering the life-story of a man who would otherwise be an interesting side-note---what the reader gets is a sort of roman a clef written on the margins of fiction.

Littauer describes the priveleged life of a Russian cavalry officer in the years immediately preceding the Revolution of 1917. He offers a series of vignettes starting with his days in officers training school. His military duties are interspersed by balls in glittering surroundings, drinking parties in the best clubs of Moscow and Petersburg, and even an impromptu meeting or two with the Tsar. The First World War, with its extended privations, intrudes upon and eventually destroys this idyllic existence. Littauer finally loses not just his life as a hussar, but his place in Russia itself, when the Bolsheviks defeat the White Russian army for which he fights. But he never loses his humor and, apparently, never became bitter about the destruction of a life which he clearly loved.

This is a charming, wonderful book which allows the reader to know, from the inside, a life of privilege and tradition that none of us will be able to experience firsthand. Littauer's affection for the cavalry and for the Russia of his youth are strongly felt, yet never marred by sentimentality or exaggeration. It is a shame that this fascinating work has gone out of print.

The Russian Revolution by John M. Dunn not only investigates the Revolution of 1917, but it also discusses major events and personalities that led to and resulted from the Revolution. The book is filled with close to one hundred illustrations and dozens of excerpts from first-hand accounts written by those whose lives were affected by the incidents that transpired between the early 1800's and mid 1900's. Dunn does not examine every minute detail of the period since a book would have to be a multiple-volume set to be the primary source on the many subjects mentioned. For this reason, I found the book to be informative, yet extremely easy to read and comprehend.

The first half of the book lets us know what life was like under the Romanov dynasty in Russia. As peasants and citizens became more restless, Tsar Nicholas began making some changes, but they were not enough. The impressionable ideas of Karl Mark and Friedrich Engels had already reached many future revolutionaries in Russia. Chapter Three leads us into the Revolution of 1905, with the infamous "Bloody Sunday," and it ends with Nicholas' attempt to quell the insurrection by allowing the establishment of the congress-like Duma. The only thing that turns attention away from the dissatisfaction with the Tsar is the outbreak of World War I. This is avoided only temporarily. The discontent arises again because of the continuing problems and Rasputin, the so-called "Mad Monk." All this and more contribute to the February Revolution of 1917, that influences Tsar Nicholas' abdication of his throne and the setting up of the Provisional Government.

The Provisional Government is desperately trying to organize and control the country as the second half of the book begins. Amid the confusion, Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders return from exile and take the final steps to be, as Lenin said in June, 1917, ". . . ready at any moment to take over the government." The next chapter goes into ample detail regarding the circumstances surrounding the Bolshevik overthrow of the Provisional Government in October, 1917. The Bolsheviks quickly seized power of Russia, but not without major opposition. The "Whites" were many resistant groups that combined together with the single goal of defeating the "Red" Bolsheviks. The Russian civil war raged on from the spring of 1918 to the fall of 1920, and left behind death and destruction throughout the country. This death and destruction would continue with Lenin in charge, and eventually worsen under Stalin. Lenin and the Communist forces were victorious, but the rebuilding of a nation in shambles would never be complete.

The book ends with a brief mention of the dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991. John Dunn suggests that the ideals of freedom and democracy that fueled the revolution(s) may be forthcoming, but, "Whether the nations of the former Soviet Union will be able to fulfill the dreams of the early revolutionaries and build a nation that represents all of its people remains an unanswered question."

The Russian Revolution by John M. Dunn summarizes the major events before, during, and after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The book is not overflowing with every detail regarding military strike after military strike, diplomatic task after diplomatic task, etc. It is a very informative and magnificent survey of the history of the Soviet Union between 1825 and 1935. The illustrations and quotations bring life to a subject that many students and people find rather dull. For these reasons, I would recommend this book to anyone with even the smallest interest in Soviet history, or history in general. The book is not too long, so reading it does not seem like an impossible task.