John Millers book provides an excellent overview of the Gorbachev period, unravelling it as a narrative of collapse. Heavily based on primary sources Miller provides an interpretation of the fall of the Soviet Union that examines both its systemic problems and the rise of intellectuals as new social force. The book accords a high degree of importance both to the changes in ideology and the power (and impotence) of the leadership. This book, while providing quite a comprehensive and sophisticated overview of the major events leading to the breakdown of the Soviet empire is nonetheless accessible enough to make highly recommendable undergraduate reading. I would rank this book alongside Remnick's Lenin's Tomb and Richard Sakwa's Gorbachev and his Reforms as a major contribution to the field.

Writing as someone trained in physics, but having a life-long side interest in biology, this is a great little volume that covers many of the physical processes important for understanding modern biology. Although it is written as an introduction, and so it is not very technical at all (for anyone having studied physics extensively), each chapter is still an inviting and broad look at some of the most interesting current problems in biology today, including adaptation, development, and evolution. There's also a nice analysis in the very first chapter, useful for rebutting creationists who claim that evolution violates thermodynamics.

it is refreshing to see a book that takes an untrodden path in discussing issues in russian and ukrainian transition after communism. first, the author believes it is important to look at these two countries together, rather than one by one. he thinks they are interconnected and dependent on one another for the success of their reform efforts. second, he says that history is important, since it influences current politics, and he combines historical analysis with the look at current events. finally, he looks at development of national identity in russia and ukraine on a broader plane than usual imperialism/nationalism discussions. not a bad reading for anyone interested in the area.

This book is the only true biography widely available in English of a great and controversial soldier. Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail N. Tukhachevskii is something of a legend to all students of the Soviet military. This aristocrat turned Bolshevik served Soviet Russia well as a brilliant and audacious commander in the Russian Civil War from 1918-22, and in the years following played a key role in developing the Red Army into the force that would eventually defeat Hitler. Tragically, Marshal Tukhachevskii was executed in 1937 on highly questionable grounds of treason.

There has been much written about Tukhachevskii as a military theorist and innovator, as well as his impressive peacetime accomplishments (modernizing the Red Army, forming large independent mechanized and airborne forces several years in advance of any Western power). Likewise, there is no shortage of information on his arrest and execution, mostly (but not always) pointing to his innocence.

While the author devotes the second half of his book to these topics, the first half is far more unique in that it covers Tukhachevskii's childhood and career as a combat soldier. He was born into an aristocratic family and, against his father's wishes, enrolled in a military academy. At the outbreak of World War I, he was commissioned as a lieutenant in an elite tsarist regiment and fought courageously until his capture by the Germans. Imprisoned as a P.O.W. until 1918, he finally escaped captivity and returned to Russia, which was now plunging into civil war. Tukhachevskii became a devoted Communist and, at the age of 25, a top Red Army Commander. He played a key role in the defeat of Admiral Kolchak's forces in the Urals and Siberia, and then commanded the final victorious campaign against Denikin's White Army in South Russia. After Poland invaded Soviet territory in 1920 under the pretense of supporting Ukrainian separatists, Tukhachevskii was placed in command of the Western Front. His bold counter-offensive brought the Red Army to the gates of Warsaw where he, in turn, was defeated in a battle that remains controversial to this day. In spite of this failure, the young Red general crushed Polish Marshal Pilsudski's bid to dominate Eastern Europe. His final actions as a combat commander came in 1921-22 when he successfully put down the Kronstadt mutiny and the Tambov rebellion.

I wish that the author had gone into more detail, especially when discussing his sources. I hadn't heard of many of the books listed in the bibliography, and occasionally had to wonder if what I was reading was based on popular myth rather than established fact. However, I still give it four stars because there is, as yet, no other comparable book on the market. It's fast and exciting reading, and well worth the effort it took me to find a copy.

The Communist official Siemion Davidov arrives in the Don community of Gremyachy Log in order to start a collective farm. The community divides between those for the collective farm, and those (mainly the better-off farmers or "kulaks") fiercely opposed to it.

The subject of collectivisation in the rural Soviet Union will no doubt be as dry as old bones to many readers - that was my reaction too as I started the book. However, the Sholokhov explores many complicated issues:

* the view that all property is theft versus the inviolability of private property rights;

* do oppressive landowners deserve any loyalty from their workers?

* the conflict of essentially modernising forces (personified by Davidov, whose background is industrial-urban) with backward "traditional" rural Russia (personified by the locals); and even

* the catastrophic effects of contradictory dictats issued from the centre.

Sholokhov's position (I thought) was esssentialy pro-collectivisation, although he does not spare the reader the real problems associated with it. What does let the book down somewhat is that it's very uneven - there are long passages in which the characters tell anecdotes from their past, some meant to be humerous, others poignant. I thought most of these did not work well and were a distraction. Of course, it's fundamentally a bleak novel - the subject matter makes this almost inevitable. Luckily enough, I seemed to be in the mood!

The author was a journalist in the Soviet Union before the wall came down and he subsequently went to study at Oxford and University of Washington. This book is based on his doctoral thesis.

The basic premise of the book is that different political strategies result in widely differing intelligence strategies, depending on whether the country in question is a global leader or a challenger. Alexseev then argues this case using three case studies from the last thousand years: Mongols vs the Sung Empire; France vs Britain in the eighteenth century; and Russia vs the U.S. in the twentieth century.

The author's thesis is very persuasive, and he has a sound grasp of history, as well as the advantage of looking at much of the material "from the other side" so to speak.

The book would rate higher but for the fact the first two chapters are incredibly hard work. I almost put it down, which would have been a shame as the real value is in the later chapters.

A very detailed book on the Planet Venus, however, it reads like an algebra text book. You can read a chapter and still not know what you read. I was dissapointed that all the photographs were in black and white. If you work for NASA, this is the book for you, otherwise I would recomend somthing a little less technical

This book has the reputation for being too technical for the layman... and it is... but in many ways that is what made this a cool book. It is certainly a much harder book to read than David Grinspoon's "Venus Revealed" (A very good book for the layman). However I found some of the technical parts of this book very facinating and it made me look up where some of the equations came from (the part on the study of the clouds, Nephelometry, was very interesting). There were other parts though were I did not even bother with the math and 'took their word for it'.

I would recommend if you have not read "Venus Revealed" try that first. If Grinspoon captures your imagination then buy this one and give it a try.

This book is most misleading, and at best only an introduction to Bakhtin from Ms. Vice's viewpoint. It is an example of some of the "scholarship" currently riding the Bakhtin wave, heavily influenced by personalized interpretations of current trendy concepts and secondary scholarship. Her "alibi" (p.2) taken from Wall and Thomson, is that no study can function "from within Bakhtin's thought", and this presumably gives her justification to go entirely her own way, which is not bad, but is not supposed to be the intent of the book, and does very little for Bakhtin scholarship.

Vice chooses five different Bakhtinian "Concepts", Heteroglossia, Dialogism, Polyphony, Carnivalesque and Chronotope, and builds a chapter around each, illustrating them in every case with Novels or Films, mostly from the 1990's, chosen by her, none of which occur in Bakhtin's work. An example is the "Chronotope Chapter", which uses the Film "Thelma and Louise" as the central example. The reader will search in vain in the chapter and index for authors such as Goethe, Stendhal, Flaubert, Sterne, Hippel, Wezel, Jean Paul and others repeatedly mentioned as examples in Bakhtin's Essay: "Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel". This chapter is so far removed from Bakhtin's work, that it is impossible for the reader to get an understanding of his work, which was according to the definition of the Chronotope given by Bakhtin to show: "..the intinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature," (Bakhtin - p.84). It becomes questionable to what extent Vice understands the concepts discussed, and unlikely that she has read the examples used by Bakhtin.

It is difficult to understand how students, the supposed target audience of this book, according to the introduction, are supposed to come away with an understanding and appreciation of Bakhtin's work, when practically none of the many excellent examples he uses are even mentioned. Instead the book relies heavily on secondary Literature and current Bakhtin "Scholarship".

I can only recommend this book to readers who are fammilar with both Bahktin's work and subsequesnt studies. I instead highly recommend Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson: "Creation of a Prosaics", a much more worthwhile introduction.

Sue Vice's book certainly achieves its stated goal of introducing the increasingly popular ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin to the general public. This books greatest aspect, perhaps, is that it manages separate out Bakhtin's major ideas from his many books. However, Vice's prose is sometimes a bit muddled and I occasionally found myself turning to the source material (Bakhtin) to clarify a point that she had made. Also, while no problem for me, someone not in the lit or philosophy field might have some trouble with the lit-crit terminology Vice throws at you. Overall a good book but could be a bit better.

Sue Vice's "Introducting Bakhtin" does just that. As a relative newcomer to the field of literary theory (by way of cultural studies), I found the book to be a lucid introduction to Bakhtin and his concepts of heteroglossia, dialogism, polyphony, carnival, and the chronotope. Lit-crit discourse is a challenge to grasp as first, especially if one's background is in the social sciences, as mine is. But if the reader brings some patience and a true interest in Bakhtin and his ideas, he or she will be rewarded. My objective was be able to understand Bakhtian references in the cultural studies pieces I read as a doctoral student in consumer behavior. I am happy to report that, not only was this objective achieved, but I was further spurred to go directly to the source and read Bakhtin myself. Sue Vice does a fine job explaining and applying these complex ideas. I highly recommend this book.

I recently re-read both Smith's original "The Russians" and "The New Russians." The first book was a landmark, a riveting inside look at the USSR during the Brezhnev years, though Smith's conclusion (that the Soviet system would endure indefinitely) was dead wrong. (No shame in that. Predictions by NYT writers about the future of Russia are generally wrong.)

The second book, though written by the same man, using the same reporting techniques, is completely different. It is less about Russia (or the rest of the former USSR) than it is about Mikhail Gorbachev and the wonders he had performed and would surpass in the future. Gorbachev comes from Lincolnesque beginnings. Gorbachev does no wrong. Gorbachev has no antidemocratic side -- unless circumstances force him to act in such a way. Gorbachev is the driving force and visionary architect of the restructuring and opening of Russian society. It's as if one of Stalin's old apologists had been resurrected and put back to work -- with "Stalin" inked out and "Gorbachev" inked in.

"The New Russians" came ten years after "The Russians," and the Russian world had changed utterly in that decade. Ten years after "The New Russians" was published, the outlook for and course of the New Russia has altered radically from what Smith foresaw in 1991, and -- sadly -- not for the better.

An adolescent mash note to the last Soviet dictator when it was published, "The New Russians" is now a period piece. Read it for Smith's anecdotes and style, but look elsewhere for insight on the real New Russia.

I read this book for a college history class. I liked it and I learned a great deal from it. It was long which made it tedious for me at times. But my professor told me that in light of all that has gone on in Russia, this was short. He said for an accurate account, it couldn't be much shorter. So I plowed through it and now I know so much about Russia. It's a very informative book if you have the time and will to read it. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to understand Russia today!

This book shows from an individual's point of view, why the Soviet Union collapsed so quickly and completely. Who was Gorbechev and where did he come from. How did the Baltic states rise up and succeed. Why are the central Asian republics in ferment and uprising. It details the horrendous consequences of failed socialism. The mass executions of Stalinism, the ecological disasters of Breshnev and the simmering discontent and disillusionment of the populace are all presented thoughfully. This was a massive undertaking and although it is slow at times, after reading this book you could apply for the US Ambassadors' position in Moscow.