Learn the background of Japanese Karate along with the ins and outs of belonging to a dojo with this readable martial arts guide.The Japanese martial art of Karate is not only a means of self-defense; it is also a sport and philosophy. The Karate Dojo: Traditions and Tales of a Martial Art examines each of these aspects—through the colorful legends, tales, and traditions that are associated with the art—and explains why educators and parents are becoming i...

A unique collection of everything that Chekhov wrote about the theatre.Chekhov started writing about theatre in newspaper articles and in his own letters even before he began writing plays. Later, he wrote in detail about his own plays to his lifelong friend and mentor Alexei Suvorin, his wife and leading actress, Olga Knipper, and to the two directors of the Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko.Collected for this volume, these writings reveal Chekhov's...

Karate is not just a sport or a hobby—it’s a lifetime study toward perfection of character. Here, Dave Lowry, one of the best-known writers on the Japanese martial arts, illuminates the complete path of karate including practice, philosophy, and culture. He covers myriad subjects of interest to karate practitioners of all ages and levels, including:• The relationship between students and teachers• Cultivating the correct attitude during practice• The differences betwe...

Complete Shotokan Karate is actually two books in one: a thorough history of Japanese karate in Asia and the United States, and an instructional manual for students of the Shotokan method.Part One outlines the history of karate from its probable origins in India (or perhaps Greece), and its transmission from China through Okinawa to Japan. Relevant aspects of Japanese history and culture, such as the samurai ethos and Zen, are emphasized.

Paris, 1959. As dusk settles over the immigrant quarter, 12-year-old Michel Marini—amateur photographer and compulsive reader—is drawn to the hum of the local bistro. From his usual position at the football table, he has a vantage point on a grown-up world—of rock 'n' roll and of the Algerian War. But as the sun sinks and the plastic players spin, Michel's concentration is not on the game, but on the huddle of men gathered in the shadows of a back room. Past the bar, behind a partly drawn ...

A selection of the finest short stories from “one of the most popular writers in Russia,” praised by many as the female Chekhov (The New York Times)Teffi's genius with the short form made her a literary star in pre-revolutionary Russia, beloved by Tsar Nicholas II and Vladimir Lenin alike. These stories, taken from the whole of her career, show the full range of her gifts. Extremely funny—a wry, scathing observer of societ...

Meet Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, also known as Pyat. Tsarist rebel, Nazi thug, continental conman, and reactionary counterspy: the dark and dangerous anti-hero of Michael Moorcock’s most controversial workPublished in 1981 to great critical acclaim—then condemned to the shadows and unavailable in the U.S. for thirty years—Byzantium Endures, the first of the Pyat Quartet, is not a book for the faint-hearted. It’s the story of a cocaine addict, sexual adventurer, ...

Sergei Dovlatov's subtle, dark–edged humor and wry observations are in full force in The Suitcase as he examines eight objects—the items he brought with him in his luggage upon his emigration from the U.S.S.R. These seemingly undistinguished possessions, stuffed into a worn–out suitcase, take on a riotously funny life of their own as Dovlatov inventories the circumstances under which he acquired them, occasioning a brilliant series of interconnected tales: A poplin shirt evokes th...

In his novel based on the extraordinary life of the brother of Vladimir Nabokov, Paul Russell re-creates the rich and changing world in which Sergey, his family and friends lived; from wealth and position in pre-revolutionary Russia to the halls of Cambridge University and the Parisian salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. But it is the honesty and vulnerability of Sergey, our young gay narrator, that hook the reader: his stuttering childhood in the shadow of his brilliant brother, ...

Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s Russia, Pushkin's verse novel follows the fates of three men and three women. Engaging, full of suspense, and varied in tone, it contains a large cast of characters and offers the reader many literary, philosophical, and autobiographical digressions, often in a highly satirical vein. Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's own favourite work, and this new translatio...

A beloved 20th century writer’s painful and humorous memoir of leaving her home in post-revolutionary Russia forever, written with a poet’s sensitivity to tone and rhythm“Despite the backdrop of terror, war, death and loss, Teffi’s world becomes somewhere we do not want to leave”—Claire Kohda Hazelton, The GuardianConsidered Teffi’s single greatest work, Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea is a deeply personal account o...

From Helen Rappaport, the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanov Sisters comes After the Romanovs, the story of the Russian aristocrats, artists, and intellectuals who sought freedom and refuge in the City of Light.Paris has always been a city of cultural excellence, fine wine and food, and the latest fashions. But it has also been a place of refuge for those fleeing persecution, never more so than before and after the Russian R...