The outermost khanate of the Mongol Empire was the Golden Horde, which conquered the Rus' in northwestern Russia in the thirteenth century and continued to rule there in some capacity until the Russian Empire annexed Crimea, the khanate's last holdout, in 1783. Despite vast cultural and geographic differences between Rus' and the Mongols' traditional homeland on the steppes of Central Asia, the Golden Horde flourished, with Moscow becoming the dominant...

“An extraordinary debut, a deeply lovely novel that evokes with uncommon deftness the terrible, heartbreaking beauty that is life in wartime. Like the glorious ghosts of the paintings in the Hermitage that lie at the heart of the story, Dean’s exquisite prose shimmers with a haunting glow, illuminating us to the notion that art itself is perhaps our most necessary nourishment. A superbly graceful novel.”  — Chang-Rae

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A faithful translation of the classic written at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century follows the narrator's withdrawal from his life as an official to the underground, where he makes passionate and obsessive observations on social utopianism and the irrational nature of humankind.

"The harrowing, little-known story of the ARA, an American effort to save the newly-formed Soviet Union from a disastrous famine"--

Chronicles the life of eighteenth-century Russian empress Catherine the Great, covering such aspects as her difficult early years of marriage, her fierce ambition, and the political intrigue that shaped her reign.

Taking advantage of material unavailable until the fall of the Soviet Union, Erickson portrays Alexandra's story as a closely observed, enthrallingly documented, progressive psychological retreat from reality. The lives of the Romanovs were full of color and drama, but the personal life of Alexandra has remained enigmatic. Under Erickson's masterful scrutiny the full dimensions of the Empresses' singular psychology are revealed: her childhood bereavement,...