Literary references

book background, history, literature

The business of comparing national literatures across languages and time is definitely tricky. Take the English 19th century prose from Jane Austen through Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Trollope, George Eliot, Hardy, to Joseph Conrad. By any yardstick it would be...

Strange Moment in American-Russian Relationship

history, Russia

In 1775, Colonies in North America rebelled against the British rule.  The British government discovered that it had a serious problem.  It had the best fleet in the world but it hardly had an army.  The British, like other monarchies of that period,...

Where is Europe?

book background, Europe, history, Russia

Is this a silly question?  It certainly seems silly.  Of course, we all know where Europe is.  But do we really?To know where Europe is one has to know where its borders are.  And what are Europe’s borders?  Well, it’s all water, isn’t...

Does Handwriting Matter?

Europe, history, personal, writing life

Does handwriting matter?  Philip Hensker thinks it does.  It’s more intimate, he says.  And it shows our personality.  And after accounting for such important part of our lives, it is disappearing.I, for one, side with Hensker’s Ph. D. supervisor...

“The Odyssey” in a Lvov Prison

Europe, history

Following the outbreak of WW2, which closely followed the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Red Army occupied eastern Poland, including the city of Lvov. And following that, a lot of people started getting arrested.Thus it came to be that a Polish...

No time to read anymore?

Anna Karenina, history, Roosevelt

David McCullough is unimpressed.“Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on...