Lenin's Ear is the story of a Russian artist, who grew up in the post-Stalin era. His early years are a partly true account of a boy growing up in Post World War II Russia. Being an independent thinker, he found many ways to get into trouble. His mother, a costume designer for the Kirov Ballet, worked hard to provide him with the benefits one could get by being a good Socialist. After having studied at the prestigious Art Academy of Leningrad, he was expected to fulfill the requirements as...

A truly wonderful book. One that should be used as a textbook in History in high school. Easily readable, it takes the reader on a voyage of far reaching proportions.What is it that makes this book so pleasurable and instructive? A fresh approach to the evolution of knowledge and science as experienced historically by the pioneers. The exploration in retrospective of the discovery of the concept of time and the clock, the compass, the telescope, the microscope and the evolutionary ...

One of the most successful shows in Broadway history, The Book of Mormon broke box office records when it debuted in 2011 and received nine Tony awards, including Best Musical. A collaboration between Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators of the show South Park) and Robert Lopez (Avenue Q), the show was a critical success, cited for both its religious irreverence and sendup of musical traditions.In Singing and Dancing to The Book of Mormon: Critical Essays on the Broadway Musical, M...

HBO’s Girls and the Awkward Politics of Gender, Race, and Privilege is a collection of essays that examines the HBO program Girls. Since its premiere in 2012, the series has garnered the attention of individuals from various walks of life. The show has been described in many terms: insightful, out-of-touch, brash, sexist, racist, perverse, complex, edgy, daring, provocative—just to name a few. Overall, there is no doubt that Girls has firmly etched itself in the fabric of early twenty-firs...

Across America and around the world, the five love languages have revitalized relationships and saved marriages from the brink of disaster. Can they also help individuals, couples, and families cope with the devastating diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD)?Coauthors Chapman, Shaw, and Barr give a resounding yes. Their innovative application of the five love languages creates an entirely new way to touch the lives of the five million Americans who have Alzheimer’s, as well as their...

When historian Fluke Kelso learns of the existence of a secret notebook belonging to Josef Stalin he is determined to track it down, whatever the consequences. From the violent political intrigue and decadence of modern Moscow he heads north - to the vast forests surrounding the White Sea port of Archangel, and a terrifying encounter with Russia's unburied past.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR • A DUA LIPA BOOK CLUB PICK“Imagine Call Me By Your Name set in Communist Poland and you'll get a sense of Jedrowski's moving debut about a consuming love affair amidst a country being torn apart.” — O, The Oprah Magazine“Captivating both for its shimmering surfaces and its terrifying depths. Tomasz Jedrowski is a remarkable writer.” — Justin Torres, bestselling...

Diane Armstrong's bestselling fictional debutA mother's silence, a village with a terrible secret, and an Australian woman who travels to Poland to uncover the truth ... When forensic dentist Halina Shore arrives in Nowa Kalwaria to take part in a war crimes investigation, she finds herself at the centre of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy. What she does not realise is that she has also embarked on a confronting personal journey. Inspired by a ...

Discover the epic story of revolution, passion, and betrayal from international bestselling author and historian, Simon Sebag Montefiore - Book 1 in The Mosow Trilogy!*RECOMMENDED BY THE QUEEN'S READING ROOM BOOK CLUB*'Intricate, fast moving... by the time I put the book down, long after midnight, I was in tears' - The Times'Gripping. The perfect mix of sweeping history and...

Casper Silverbell is a grumpity elf, and with good reason. As an accountant at the North Pole, he gets no respect from most of the creative elves who don't see his job as important. The only joys in his life are his pet polar bears, his love of fine tailoring, and his monthly spats with the head of Gift Development.Did he say joy? He meant to say annoyance. Dmitri Hollyberry is everything Casper resents about creative elves, wrapped up in one green-haired, tattooed package. Dmitri ...

'Bill Bryson on two wheels' IndependentScaling a new peak of rash over-ambition, Tim Moore tackles the 9,000km route of the old Iron Curtain on a tiny-wheeled, two-geared East German shopping bike.Asking for trouble and getting it, he sets off at the Arctic winter's brutal height, bullying his plucky MIFA 900 through the endless and massively sub-zero desolation of snowbound Finland.Haunted throughout the journey by the bor...

Once 'the Paris of the East', Bucharest in 1989 is a world of danger, repression and corruption, but also of intensity and ravaged beauty. As Ceausescu's demolition squads race to destroy the old city and replace it with a sinister Stalinist Legoland, its inhabitants live out communism's dying days not knowing how or where things will end. In 'The Last Hundred Days' a young English student arrives in Bucharest to take up a job he never applied for and whose duties are never made clear. He ...