Tag: history

Dmitry Brushko “Zmena. Sergei Brushko”

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ZMN_cr

I really love good photo albums, especially with photos of Minsk or Belarus. So, when someone I know shared a link in the spring of 2019 to a crowdfunding campaign for a book of photographs by Sergei Brushko, I had almost no doubts and immediately contributed. No, I didn’t know about photojournalist Sergei Brushko at the time, but I really liked several of the shared photographs and the theme of the book. And finally, my copy reached me, and I was able to look through it calmly and even read it (as it’s not just a photo album).

Sergei Brushko passed away in 2000, but during his career, he worked as a photojournalist for several Belarusian publications, and as a documentary photographer, he participated in several international exhibitions. His son, Dmitry Brushko, followed in his father’s footsteps, and it was Dmitry who initiated the release of this book and served as its compiler.

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Andrey Podshibyakin “Time of Games!”

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It seems that the book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels was quite successful in demonstrating that the public is very interested in stories about games and their creators. Suddenly, previously published books started being reprinted, and new ones began to appear quickly. One of these is a book by Andrey Podshibyakin, who started his career in the gaming industry as a journalist for the “GAME.EXE” magazine. Unlike Jason Schreier’s aforementioned book, Andrey focused only on Russian games and companies, including our very own “World of Tanks.”

Like Schreier, Andrey Podshibyakin selected a few games around which he built his book, giving it the subtitle “The Russian Gaming Industry in Faces and Dreams: from Parkan to World of Tanks.” The list includes:

  • “Parkan,” 1997
  • “Vangers,” 1998
  • “Hard Truck,” 1998 (and sequels from 2001 and 2009)
  • “Rage of Mages: The Seal of Mystery,” 1998
  • “Sea Dogs: The Curse of the Distant Seas” (actually, it’s called “The Curse of Far Seas”), 2001 (and the sequel from 2003)
  • “IL-2 Sturmovik,” 2001
  • “Silent Storm,” 2003
  • “Perimeter,” 2004
  • “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl,” 2007, and “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky,” 2008
  • “Cut the Rope,” 2010
  • “World of Tanks,” 2010
  • There are also several unreleased titles, such as “Vseslav the Sorcerer” and “The Adventures of Captain Blood,” among others.

Even this list shows that just text may not be enough for such a book. While Schreier covered globally recognized games, here are titles that many modern readers may not know, and those who do may not remember the details. Hence, illustrations would be very helpful. Memory is unreliable: you may recall that something was fantastic, but you still want to look back and compare those breakthrough graphics with today’s standards.

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Boris Akunin “The Fortunate Adventures and Reflections of Lucius Catin”

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dobrokluchenia

Boris Akunin is gradually approaching modern times in his works on the history of Russia. He has already covered the era of the empresses, followed by a novel about the most famous one—Catherine the Great. The reign of this remarkable woman has long attracted creative minds. In fact, the third season of a TV series about her is currently airing. And indeed, many fascinating events took place during those years as Russia underwent rapid changes. Naturally, this novel was expected to be filled with intrigue, adventure, and honorable duels—the typical swashbuckling flair.

However, even the title of the latest novel, The Fortunate Adventures and Reflections of Lucius Catin, seemed a bit disconcerting. It didn’t have the adventurous spirit one might expect. In his previous book about the era of Peter the Great, Akunin skillfully portrayed the times without delving too deeply into the specifics. Yet, while I devoured that book, this one was more of a gradual read, something I had to return to in bursts.

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Yuval Noah Harari “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”

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A few months ago, I got the impression that everyone in my reading circle had gone crazy over “Sapiens” by the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari. Nearly everyone either read the book or expressed their intent to do so.

The reviews from those who had read it were overwhelmingly positive (for example, on Goodreads, the book currently has an average rating of 4.45 out of 5, based on almost 300,000 (!) ratings). And since I love history, I couldn’t pass it by.

Jumping ahead a bit, I’ll say that my rating turned out to be significantly lower than the average. Here’s why.

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Boris Akunin “The Life of Remarkable People and Animals”

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Boris Akunin is an extraordinary author. Whatever he writes, it always turns out to be interesting. True, some of his books may not be great overall, but they are always engaging to read. In much the same way, I used to follow his posts on LiveJournal, where Boris Akunin would share notes about people and events that piqued his interest.

The book “The Life of Remarkable People and Animals” is essentially a collection of those posts, gathered under one cover and published in book form.

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Laurence Rees “Auschwitz. The Nazis & The Final Solution”

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I have written more than once that the topic of the Holocaust is very important to me. I’m certain this is directly tied to the fact that the extermination of Jews during World War II personally affected my family. But this is also an example of something people must never forget so that it never happens again.

The book Auschwitz by Laurence Rees didn’t exactly fall into my hands by chance; modern algorithms recommended it to me because I had read other books on this topic. Until that day, however, I knew nothing about the author. Laurence Rees is a British historian who has devoted much of his career to studying Nazism, its causes, and its rise. Auschwitz: The Nazis & the Final Solution is just one of his books, in which he attempts to explain not only the history of one of the most infamous death camps but also the development of such a horrific concept as the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”

Before I share my thoughts on the book, I’d like to quote the author’s own words with which he concludes the book. I couldn’t put it better myself (I have read the book in Russian and couldn’t find the original quote so here I place the back translation from Russian, sorry):

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Boris Akunin “Eurasian Empire. The History of the Russian State. The Era of the Empresses”

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I love Akunin’s books, including the much-criticized series The History of the Russian State. Yes, the author is often not very objective and adds much of his own perspective and worldview into the text. However, because of this, his works are often more lively and interesting to read than more scientific but dry historical books.

Now, he has finally reached the 18th century, the period after the death of Peter the Great and up until the reign of Alexander I (which will be covered in the next volume of the series). Akunin calls this period the “Era of the Empresses” because women largely dictated Russia’s development during this time. Men were also in power, but far less frequently compared to the empresses.

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Auschwitz: A History in Photographs

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auschwitz

In 2013, my wife and I took a road trip through Poland. One specific stop on our itinerary was Auschwitz, not the town, but the museum located on the site of the former concentration camp. This was a place I absolutely wanted to visit. The genocide of the Jews is part of my family’s history.

I won’t talk about the museum itself right now, that’s a subject for another conversation. But before leaving, I bought a photo album titled Auschwitz: A History in Photographs from the shop near the exit. It’s one of the few books I took with me when we moved to another country. However, for some reason, I only started to study it in detail five years later. I don’t quite know how to write about this book, but I still want to.

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Boris Akunin “The Walnut Buddha”

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budda

The latest book in the fictional subseries History of the Russian State in Novels and Stories is a supplement to the volume about Tsar Peter the Great and consists of just one main novella. As with all of Akunin’s books, the writing style is very light — I practically “devoured” the entire novella. But as for the content… I liked the documentary volume about the tsar less than the earlier ones in the series, and this novella didn’t turn out to be much better.

There are interesting characters here, but the author doesn’t allow them to fully develop. Moreover, the novella is more about Japanese Buddhist teachings than about the era of Peter the Great. It’s a story about a “path” with a lowercase ‘p’ and the “Path” with an uppercase ‘P’. With lessons on how one should live and what is most important in life.

As for the events taking place and the country and time period through which this path unfolds… that’s all not particularly important.

It was an interesting read, but it feels like Akunin forcefully tied it to Peter’s era.

My rating: 3/5

Edward Ross “Filmish: A Graphic Journey Through Film”

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How badly I wanted to read this book! And how great my disappointment turned out to be! It’s much easier to list what’s wrong with this book than to find anything good about it.

In Russian the book is titled How Film Works: Theory and History of Cinema and was marketed as “an extensive study presented as a stylish and engaging comic.” But contrary to the title and description, it’s not about how cinema works at all. Frankly, the translators share some of the blame here, as the original title is Filmish: A Graphic Journey Through Film, which didn’t claim to be about how cinema works, nor about theory or history.

So what is it actually about? If I were to sum it up briefly, I’d say this: it’s a collection of completely unrelated paragraphs that try to appear as a scholarly article with deep insights. More often than not, these “insights” come from other people, whom the author frequently quotes throughout the book. This is criticism in its worst form, where the writer attempts to explain what the filmmaker intended to convey, or what they were thinking. But reality shows that often the filmmaker wasn’t thinking about anything of the sort (there’s a great example with the horse in the film Afonya, which Georgiy Daneliya wrote about in his memoirs).

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