They drove cross-country and back on a ten-week trip, recording images of American life through humerous texts and the lens of a Leica camera. When they returned home, they published their work in Ogonek, the Soviet equivalent of Time magazine, and later in the book Odnoetazhnaia Amerika (Single-Storied America). This wonderful lost workfilled with wry observations, biting opinions, and telling photographsis now collected in Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip, the first English translation.From Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip:"The word 'America' has well-developed grandiose associations for a Soviet person, for whom it refers to a country of skyscrapers, where day and night one hears the unceasing thunder of surface and underground trains, the hellish roar of automobile horns, and the continuous despairing screams of stockbrokers rushing through the skyscrapers waving their ever-falling shares. We want to change that image."A Cabinet Book published by Princeton Architectural Press

    The Blue Cup is a 1936 Russian language short story.

    "Wrangler" 2. Two Bakeries 3. "An Incident in the Life of Makar" 4. The Village Shop * The Railway Night Watchman * "The Song of the Old Oak" * Wanderings * The First Story * Yegudil Khlamida * Fame * Metekh Castle and the Nizhni-Novgorod Gaol * Nightingales and Spies * On the Stage of the Art Theatre * Three Revolutions * Writer and Fighter