Bulgakov is beloved for his novel "Master and Margarita", a surreal working of the Faust legend set in Stalinist Russia. These two plays "Flight" and "Bliss" show Bulgakov's real forte--drama. He authored plays (not published in his lifetime) and worked as a stage director (an assistant director, all he was allowed by the Soviet government, who knew him for an independent thinker.)

Both plays are very readable, despite the workaday translations. Bulgakov's flights of fancy and sarcasm (a future world without crime, for example) are comic yet scary. If you want to really get to know Bulgakov's work, these plays, plus "Heart of a Dog". "White Guard" and "Master and Margarita" make a good starting collection of his best works.

There are lots of lengthy academic tomes about Gorbachev and his time as Soviet leader, just as there are a fair number of readable but lightweight biographies. It is very refreshing to find a book which manages to be comprehensive and intelligent, but also accessible and even a pleasure to read. Short and sweet!

I have not read the English translation of this book. This review is based on a Danish translation from 1980. I recommend this book very much. Most histories of psychology fail to discuss why psychology developed the way it did, and what the principal strong points and weaknesses in the different schools of psychology are. The book discusses functionalism, behaviorism, gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis, genetic epistemology, role theory, existentialism and marxism. It is my impression that the book is able to explain the development of psychology, and not just, as most other histories of psychology, just refer one psychological researcher after another. The book is written from a marxist point of view. Much of this marxism appears naive and to be a propagandistic defence of the Soviet Union. The collapse of the system i 1989 demonstrates the naivity of this view. However, if you disregards these naive beliefs in the Soviet society and communism, you will have a fine critique of the development of psychological science, which very often have very precise arguments about the failures in different schools.

Zephyr Press, which gave us the superb Complete Poetry of Anna Achmatova, offers us a comprehensive feast of contemporary Russian poetry, with a fascinating introduction. The poetry is bittersweet, reflecting and expressing the soul of a nation changing radically from decade to decade. Many thanks to this hard-working, indefatigable small press for continuing to offer us these books.

It's a good introductory book, but for the HALF of the price of this book you can purchase a TWO wonderful volumes of Karl Kraus Photogrammetry (ISBN:3427786943 on Amazon.de)
with the abundance of very practical procedures.

I have used this book extensively in my review class for USMLE step 1 review for 3 years. It allows a logical approach to clinical situations, using laboratory values, quality photos, and informational questions. It consists of 30 5-star quality cases, that begin with admission to the hospital, pertinent History and Physical, laboratory values, radiogaphs and additional information....They are designed to invoke clinical reasoning in every step of the way...I advise this book to anyone as part of their collection of quality materal to succeed on the board step 1

This is a collection of short stories, each representing an urban legend... you would be surprised to stumble across familiar plot developments! Given the fact that the very existence of urban legends as a folklore genre has been consistently ignored in Soviet culture, this book is an invaluable source on contemporary myth. In fact, some of the stories, told by Veller in Nevsky Prospect Legends, HAVE already entered "serious" folklore collections - try and determine for yourself what was made up and what wasn't...

Mikhail Bulgakov's book The Life of Monsieur de Moliere is a very biased book that is uncritical of the great French writer Moliere. Despite the author's unabashed love of Moliere, the book is a treat from beginning to end. Bulgakov feels an affinity with Moliere because he wrote under a totalitarian regime headed by Stalin in Russia and Moliere wrote during the reign of Louis XIV. Although Moliere certainly had much more freedom than Bulgakov did, he still felt the sting of censorship from religious zealots and was often persecuted by those whom he made fun of in his plays, ( nobles, doctors, the affected ladies of French society). Bulgakov praises Moliere as the greatest French writer and as one of the greatest comediens ever. Indeed history has proven him correct. Three centuries later Moliere's works are performed in almost every nation in the world. The great joy that Bulgakov feels towards Moliere infuses the entire book (sometimes to the point of unintentional farce.) But he paints a vivid and energenic portrait of the playwright, actor and director that captures the essence of his work. Many of the details of Moliere's life are unknown and Bulgakov does take Moliere's side wherever there is ambiguity. ( For example, many of his enemies have said that Moliere married his own daughter and knew that in fact she was his daughter.) Bulgakov refutes this charge as ridiculous and indeed, without proof, it should be discounted. Bulgakov takes us from Moliere's birth (a very funny telling of how the midwife who delivered him couldn't realize he was more important to history than any royal baby she may have delivered) to his tragically ironic death right after a performance of his play The Imaginary Invalid. Bulgakov wheres his love of Moliere on his sleeve and it works to perfection in this book. Moliere's plays have an energy that imbues every verse. This book is the same way. Most other biographies are staid in comparison. They rarely capture the true genius of the great writer and almost never convey the great fun embodied in his works. Mikhail Bulgakov's biography is the best book, even though it is biased, ever written about the great French playwright.

Lermontov was a hero of my teenage years. His poems, heavily influenced by Byronic romanticism are an example of expressiveness and melancholy of the Russian soul. Lermontov was one of the greatest Russia poets ever, whose life was tragically cut short in Pyatigorsk in the North Caucasus, when he was not yet 28.

Since I can't read Russian, I have to read Bulgakov's marvelous plays and novels ("Heart of a Dog", "The Master and Margarita", "Bliss") in translation. Nor did I experience, first-hand, the horrors of the Stalin purges.

I love the work of Bulgakov--he's a master of satire and imagination. This biography in letters and notes is really essential for the non-Russian reader to get a sense of his history, life and work in a way that can't be conveyed in translation. It put all that I had read by Bulgakov into a far more comprehensible light.