They have become renowned for their visual excellence, which includes unparalleled photography, 3-D mapping, and specially commissioned cutaway illustrations. DK "Eyewitness Travel Guides" are the only guides that work equally well for inspiration, as a planning tool, a practical resource while traveling, and a keepsake following any trip. Each guide is packed with the up-to-date, reliable destination information every traveler needs, including extensive hotel and restaurant listings, themed itineraries, lush photography, and numerous maps.

    It's the greatest pioneering story in history, uniquely combining the heroic colonization of an intractable virgin land, the ghastly dangers & high adventure of Arctic exploration, & the grimmest saga of penal servitude. 400 years of continual human striving chart its course, a drama of unremitting extremes & elemental confrontations, pitting man against nature, & man against man. East of the Sun, a work of panoramic scope, is the 1st complete account of this strange & terrible story. To most Westerners, Siberia is a vast & mysterious place. The richest resource area on the face of the earth, its land mass covers 5 million square miles-7.5% of the total land surface of the globe. From the 1st foray in 1581 across the Ural Mountains by a band of Cossack outlaws to the fall of Gorbachev, East of the Sun is history on a grand scale. With vivid immediacy, Bobrick describes the often brutal subjugation of Siberia's aboriginal tribes & the cultures that were destroyed; the great 18th-century explorations that defined Siberia's borders & Russia's attempt to "extend" Siberia further with settlements in Alaska, California & Hawaii; & the transformation of Siberia into a penal colony for criminal & political exiles, an experiment more terrible than Australia's Botany Bay. There's the building of the stupendous Trans-Siberian Railway across 7 time zones; Siberia's key role in the bloody aftermath of the October Revolution in 1917; & Stalin's dreaded Gulag, which corrupted its very soil. Today, Siberia is the hope of Russia's future, now that all her appended republic have broken away. Its story has never been more timely.

    Petersburg has always felt like an impossible metropolis, risen from the freezing mists and flooded marshland of the River Neva on the western edge of Russia. It was a new capital in an old country. Established in 1703 by the sheer will of its charismatic founder, the homicidal megalomaniac Peter the Great, its dazzling yet unhinged reputation was quickly cemented by the sadistic dominion of its early rulers. This city, in its successive incarnations—St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad and, once again, St. Petersburg—has always been a place of perpetual contradiction.It was a window to Europe and the Enlightenment, but so much of Russia’s unique glory was also created here: its literature, music, dance and, for a time, its political vision. It gave birth to the artistic genius of Pushkin and Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, Pavlova and Nureyev. Yet, for all its glittering palaces, fairytale balls and enchanting gardens, the blood of thousands has been spilt on its snow-filled streets.It has been a hotbed of war and revolution, a place of siege and starvation, and the crucible for Lenin and Stalin’s power-hungry brutality. In St. Petersburg, Jonathan Miles recreates the drama of three hundred years in this paradoxical and brilliant city, bringing us up to the present day, when its fate hangs in the balance once more.This is an epic tale of murder, massacre and madness played out against squalor and splendor, and an unforgettable portrait of a city and its people.

    During this war a great Avar chieftain, Hadji Murád, broke with the Chechen leader Shamil and fled to the Russians for safety. Months later, while attempting to rescue his family from Shamil’s prison, Hadji Murád was pursued by those he had betrayed and, after fighting the most heroic battle of his life, was killed.Tolstoy, witness to many of the events leading to Hadji Murád’s death, set down this story with painstaking accuracy to preserve for future generations the horror, nobility, and destruction inherent in war.

    Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy—the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father.As she gradually learned about the extent of her father’s brutality after his death, Svetlana could no longer keep quiet and in 1967 shocked the world by defecting to the United States—leaving her two children behind. But although she was never a part of her father’s regime, she could not escape his legacy. Her life in America was fractured; she moved frequently, married disastrously, shunned other Russian exiles, and ultimately died in poverty in Wisconsin.With access to KGB, CIA, and Soviet government archives, as well as the close cooperation of Svetlana’s daughter, Rosemary Sullivan pieces together Svetlana’s incredible life in a masterful account of unprecedented intimacy. Epic in scope, it’s a revolutionary biography of a woman doomed to be a political prisoner of her father’s name. Sullivan explores a complicated character in her broader context without ever losing sight of her powerfully human story, in the process opening a closed, brutal world that continues to fascinate us.Illustrated with photographs.

    Is she the Russian Grand Duchess or the thief of another woman's legacy?Countless others have rendered their verdict. Now it is your turn.Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia, where they face a merciless firing squad. None survive. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed.Germany, February 17, 1920: A young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anastasia Romanov is pulled shivering and senseless from a canal. Refusing to explain her presence in the freezing water or even acknowledge her rescuers, she is taken to the hospital where an examination reveals that her body is riddled with countless horrific scars. When she finally does speak, this frightened, mysterious young woman claims to be the Russian grand duchess. As rumors begin to circulate through European society that the youngest Romanov daughter has survived the massacre at Ekaterinburg, old enemies and new threats are awakened. The question of who Anna Anderson is and what actually happened to Anastasia Romanov spans fifty years and touches three continents. This thrilling saga is every bit as moving and momentous as it is harrowing and twisted.

    Arranged chronologically for easy reference and illustrated throughout with artwork, photographs, and documents, this is a information-packed overview of the lives and legacies of America's first ladies. What's more, The First Ladies Fact Book features selections of the most intimate correspondence of all the first ladies. Delightful surprises abound, including little-known information about the women's hobbies, styles of dress, habits of socializing, and quirks. With more than 700 photographs and illustrations, this is a eye-catching history of the nation's first ladies.

    This rare opportunity took the famous travellers not only to Moscow and Stalingrad - now Volgograd - but through the countryside of the Ukraine and the Caucasus. A RUSSIAN JOURNAL is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document. Steinbeck and Capa recorded the grim realities of factory workers, government clerks, and peasants, as they emerged from the rubble of World War II. This is an intimate glimpse of two artists at the height of their powers, answering their need to document human struggle

    A barbarous, volatile feudal tsar with a taste for torture; a progressive and enlightened reformer of government and science; a statesman of vision and colossal significance: Peter the Great embodied the greatest strengths and weaknesses of Russia while being at the very forefront of her development.Robert K. Massie delves deep into the life of this captivating historical figure, chronicling the pivotal events that shaped a boy into a legend - including his 'incognito' travels in Europe, his unquenchable curiosity about Western ways, his obsession with the sea and establishment of the stupendous Russian navy, his creation of an unbeatable army, and his relationships with those he loved most: Catherine, his loving mistress, wife, and successor; and Menshikov, the charming, unscrupulous prince who rose to power through Peter's friendship. Impetuous and stubborn, generous and cruel, a man of enormous energy and complexity, Peter the Great is brought fully to life.

     At the time of his incarceration, Kitchin, a Finnish citizen, was working in Russia as a representative for an American firm. He was arrested by the Soviet secret police (known as the OGPU at the time), charged with violating an obscure regulation, held in prison, and then sent to a labor camp located in northern Russia where he describes the brutalities he endured and witnessed. He had the good fortune after a time to be assigned clerical work in the office of the penal camp administration. This undoubtedly saved his life and it also gave him a unique opportunity to observe the inner workings of the OGPU organization. As a citizen of Finland, his case was a matter of concern to the Finnish government, whose efforts finally obtained for him permission to leave Soviet Russia. His physical condition after four horrible years was dire. A year and a half were spent in convalescing, and another year in preparing his notes and writing this memoir of his experiences. Prisoner of the OGBU is one of the only first-hand authentic accounts of the penal camps of the Far North, and it is still relevant today in understanding and studying that brutal period of history. ‘This for the market of Escape from the Soviets, and others of the sort, an account of the piled-up horrors of a prison camp of the Soviet Secret Police. Kitchin was a representative of Finnish interests, and got caught on a technicality and sent for four horrible years to the far north. First hand data of Soviet methods and inefficiencies, of the regime and a revealing picture of behind the scenes, of incredible brutalities. Well done and thrillingly absorbing reading.’ – Kirkus Reviews

    The entire family, including their personal physician, retainers, and even their pets, became tragic victims of the Bolshevik revolution. They were arrested, exiled, and ultimately secretly murdered in a small cellar of a house in the Urals, in the summer of 1918. In this book, you will follow the events which led up to their eventual tragic fate through personal words of each family member, as well as their close friends and associates. Their letters, diaries, and postcards - many of which have been translated into English here for the first time - tell a unique story, and have yet a lot to reveal. Translated from Russian by Helen Azar, along with Eva and Dan McDonald, who translated most of the 1918 letters from French, this book offers an extraordinary glimpse into the very private world, and the final years, of the last Russian imperial family - which they chronicle in their own words.

    Within three generations of the foundation of the Belgian Royal House in 1831, Coburgs had tarried into almost every royal family in Europe. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the throne of Belgium is that it ever came into being: created after the successful rebellion against the Dutch, handed to an imported German prince, it was hoped, without much enthusiasm, that it would weld together a new nation of disparate and quarrelsome elements. It has survived to the present, in an era which has seen older and seemingly more secure dynasties vanish. The first Coburg of Belgium, Leopold I, as that 'Dear Uncle' to whom Queen Victoria was so abjectly devoted in the early years of her reign. Cheated by the death of his first wife, Charlotte, Princess of Wales, daughter of George IV and Queen Caroline, from becoming Prince Consort to the Queen of England, the resilient Leopold of Saxe-Coburg not only became the constitutional monarch of Belgium but married the daughter of the King of France. With this the Coburgs were well launched on a climb from their petty German principality to position of enormous world power. Leopold I's son, Leopold II, vastly enriched the family fortunes by his avaricious plunder of the Congo and scandalised Europe with his sexual promiscuity. In fact, not until the reign of 'Albert of the Belgians' (1909-34) and his beloved Queen Elisabeth, did the royal Coburgs prove themselves a very endearing family.

    Petersburg; it stretches to Alaska in the east, to the Black Sea and the Ottoman Empire to the south, to the Baltic in the west and to Archangel and the Artic Ocean to the north.            Who are the Russians and what is the source of their imperialistic culture?  Why was Russia so driven to colonize and conquer?  From Kievan Rus’---the first-ever Russian state, which collapsed with the invasion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century---to ruthless Muscovy, the Russian Empire of the eighteenth century and finally the Soviet period, this groundbreaking study analyses the growth and dissolution of each vast empire as it gives way to the next.            Refreshing in its insight and drawing on a vast range of scholarship, this book also explicitly addresses the question of what the future holds for Russia and her neighbors, and asks whether her sphere of influence is growing.

    Her husband served in the Ulster cabinet and was Air Minister in the National Government of 1934-5. Edith founded the Women's Legion during the First World War and was also an early campaigner for women's suffrage. She created the renowned Mount Stewart Gardens in County Down that are now owned by the National Trust.All her life, Edith remained at the heart of politics both in Westminster and Ireland. She is perhaps best known for her role as 'society's queen' - a hostess to the rich and famous. Her close circle of friends included Winston Churchill, Lady Astor, Neville Chamberlain and Harold Macmillan who congregated in her salon, known as 'The Ark'. Other members included artists and writers such as John Buchan, Sean O'Casey. Britain's first Labour prime minister, Ramsey MacDonald, became romantically obsessed by her.

    From the time of the Tsars to the waning days of Communist regime, Russian leaders tried to control the flow of ideas by controlling its citizens' movements. They believed strict limits on travel combined with censorship was the best way to escape the influence of subversive Western ideologies. Yet Russians continued to emigrate westward, both to seek new opportunities and to flee political crises at home.Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Russians' presence in Western countries - particularly the United States - has been for the Kremlin both the biggest threat and the biggest opportunity. It sought for years to use the Russian emigre community to achieve Russia's goals - espionage to be sure, but also to influence policies and public opinion. Russia's exiles are a potent mix of the very rich and the very driven, some deeply hostile to their homeland and others deeply patriotic. Russia, a vast, insular nation, depends on its emigres - but it cannot always count on them.Celebrated Moscow-based journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan masterfully look at the complex, ever-shifting role of Russian émigrés from the October Revolution to present day. From comely secret agents to tragically doomed dissidents, the story of Russian émigrés is at times thrilling, at times touching, and always full of intrigue. But their influence and importance is an invaluable angle through which to understand Russia in the modern world.The Compatriots provides an intriguing and thought provoking gripping history of Russian score settling around the globe.©2019 Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan (P)2019 Hachette Audio