The inclusion among these travel guides of Genevra Gerhart"s "The Russian’s World" may at first seem incongruous; her book is primarily intended to acquaint students of the Russian language with some of those countless patterns of everyday life that give Russian culture its distinctive chracter. Because of its focus, however, her book will be of interest to the traveler whether or not he seeks to learn the language. With scores of brief entries the author introduces us to the habits and assumptions that every Russian knows so well they are rarely verbalized. She reports on how a cow's moo or horse's neigh sounds in Russian ("Mu-Mu" and "I-go-go):tells us how to use the Russian abacus (it's different from the Chinese); sets forth rules for Russian children's games and gives tips on verbal snobbery and Russian pig-Latin. She also touches on other matters so diverse as hitchhiking practices, the use of deodorants, internal passports and the history of the toilet in Russia.

The tourist whose strongest impressions are of the Kremlin armory and the doctoral candidate whose eyes are closed to everything but the syntax of Pushkin's early prose would both miss what interests Genevra Gerhart most. Her insatiable curiosity and her sense of the apparent significance of trivia are infectious. By culling the massive but neglected works of Russian and Soviet ethnographers she has put together a volume that is as refreshing in its fashion as August von Haxthausen's great "Studies on the Interior of Russia" was a century ago. Like Haxthausen, she has taken seriously what others have scarcely noticed, and in so doing she has begun the complex and demanding task of uncovering the world which cliche and caricature have for so long obscured.

A general bias in our field against reviewing textbooks has probably kept this book from receiving the attention it deserves in Slavists' journals. Certainly, even in its first edition The Russian’s World is a terrific supplement to all levels of Russian language instruction. Genevra Gerhart's work is equally valuable as a primary text in classes on Russian culture. But more impressive, and perhaps unsettling, is the fact that such basic information should be so important, and oftentimes unknown, even to senior researchers. As a pedagogic tool or independent refresher, this new, extensively expanded and revised second edition is an irreplaceable resource for the non-native scholar.

Simply put, rarely has such a broad topic, or "amorphous mass," as the author terms it in her acknowledgments, been so comprehensively and usefully presented. In a brief preface, Gerhart states that her goal is to "describe for non-Russians what Russian common knowledge might be." And what is common knowledge? Imagine sitting with your Russian friends and explaining the cultural references of "The Simpsons," "Seinfeld," or, what the heck, "ID4" and you begin to understand the problems that a foreigner, even one who is highly educated and fluent in English, might have in grasping what our culture takes for granted.

As fluid and dynamic as pop culture is, it is no wonder that Gerhart left it out of this book. Nevertheless, just about everything else (what I might call the "deep background" to pop culture) is here. A four-year university Russian course might naturally cover a third of the information contained in this book. Gerhart breaks the topic "common knowledge" down into five major headings (newly organized for the second edition) and 17 chapters, covering such themes as "the human being," "names," "clothing," "housing," "transportation," "education," "speech," "numbers," with brand new or significantly expanded chapters on "conduct," "food," "medicine," "work and money," "shopping," "nature," "holidays and the church," and "play." Nine appendices (four new) round out the material with suggestions for doing business in Russia, standard abbreviations, an explanation of the table of ranks, a primer on reading chemical formulas, the Russian versions of the Morse code and Braille alphabet, an index of common Russian birds, a bibliographic essay on language references, and a section of maps. The book also contains a complete index, in both English and Russian.

The text is written in English with Russian words in bold-faced Cyrillic type following their English equivalents. Besides offering a wealth of photographs, charts, and illustrations, Gerhart punctuates her explanations with sayings ("pogovorki"), and prose and poetry excerpts in Russian. Translations of the prose passages are provided at the end of each chapter. As a rule, the poetic citations are not translated because, as Gerhart states in her preface, "many Russians know them by heart. (That remark is, indeed, a hint.)" In other words, memorize these passages and amaze your Russian friends!

Undergraduates love this book. It is a true invitation into the culture. Having mastered the information contained in any of the chapters one could confidently sit down for dinner at a Russian table and gain praise for a detailed and "native" understanding of the language and customs. Based on personal experience, nothing helps your research while in Russia as much as being prepared with a good toast for the inevitable drinking party, or even better, a good song. (11-14) Anyone interested in a "real" Russian experience will want to study carefully the customs of the bathhouse, or "bania" (43- 45). Who going to Russia doesn't need to know just what "kholodets" really is? The Russian’s World is full of such gems.

The only caveat is a conservative and even patrician tone in some passages. For example, Gerhart seems unable to express her love and respect for Russian culture without taking potshots at Americans. When she remarks that "Russians who have actually known or dealt with Americans ... find them to be naive (peaceniks and fundamentalists in particular) and incredibly ill-informed if not outright unschooled" (5), she is obviously betraying a prejudice held not only by unfortunate Russians. It is not that I can't agree with her, but I also can't help wondering whether Americans really have a monopoly on ignorance and boorish behavior. Who is it that cheers Anpilov and votes for Zhirinovsky, anyway?

Gerhart also censures the American lack of manners when she writes "Russian women are surprised when male companions ignore such courtesies as holding doors open" (5). Actually, gender relations, sexuality, and especially sexism would have made an interesting topic for an eighteenth chapter. In a footnote explaining the variety of recipes for Russian Easter delicacies, Gerhart notes: "every cook has her own preferences. (Russian males have not been freed for cooking)" (334). Apparently, despite the thoroughness of this volume, certain "unattractive," if common, sides of Russian life were deemed less than fit for inclusion. Probably the mountain of available material on this subject would have required too rigorous a selection.

These objections are picayune next to the momentous contribution Gerhart has made to the study of Russian culture. Mixing my historical metaphors, this work is the "podvig" of a "bogatyr," for which the author deserves the title "Hero(ine) of Scholastic Labor." Her passion for the topic comes through clearly when, lamenting that the tradition of the bathhouse is disappearing among younger and "less-sophisticated" Russians, she directs the reader: "it is your job to disabuse them" (45). Assimilating and applying the vast and enormously useful information contained in this book will be accomplishment enough for me.

Gerhart's own web page contains a complete table of contents, helpful suggestions for classroom use, and sample passages from the text.

Reviewer: John Kachur, University of Pittsburgh

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The Book Review Page is maintained by Sibelan Forrester, Assistant Professor of Russian, Swarthmore College. If you are interested in reviewing for this page please send your coordinates and areas of interest to sforres1@swarthmore.edu

Gerhart, Genevra. The Russian’s World: Life and Language. Second Edition. Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1995. 419 pp., $34.75 (paper).

Neither a textbook, nor an encyclopedia, nor a collection of essays, the genre of The Russian’s World is hard to define. Imagine a book that tells foreigners things we take for granted about this country, things we think everyone knows and no one needs an explanation for. Is there an adult in the United States who would not know and had to be told who or what George Washington, Chevrolet, Hollywood, apple pie, baseball, FBI were? It is these "obvious" things, only their Russian equivalents, that Genevra Gerhart's The Russian’s World offers us. And what a rich offering it is! The Russian’s World is many things. It is about the (often unconsciously) shared common heritage of Russian traditions and customs, about unwritten (or written) norms of behavior and rules of etiquette. It is a treasure trove of invaluable, often hard-to-find information on what is "obvious" to all Russians, what all Russians know just by being Russian, and what all students of Russian should know. It is a book that answers many of those questions you would ask a Russian if there was one next to you--but not all of us have a Russian next to us and, as the author wryly remarks, her book would certainly be quieter... The Russian’s World contains lists of words and expressions seldom found in dictionaries, from four letter words to diminutive and endearing forms of first names (Galia, Galechka) to pet names (Sharik, Kabysdokh) to pronunciation (San Sanych, Andrevna) to interjections (Tfu! Aga!). It tells us how to read a chess problem or a chemical formula, or how to say important things like "eenie, meenie, miny mo," not to mention "break a leg!" The reader can also find out about such mysterious things as how to use that most famous Russian computer model, the abacus, how to negotiate that most infamous Russian institution, the line, how to address a Russian envelope ("backwards": country first, person last--collective spirit? better logic?), what to wear to church, etc. It is rich, almost too rich, in long lists of a large variety of things, plants, birds, food stuffs, body parts, names, bad words, good words-you name it, this book has it. It is a mini-encyclopedia of Russian life, and a pictorial one at that, containing numerous photographs of the realia of daily life that are seldom found in the usual kinds of picture books or encyclopedias. Much of The Russian’s World is invaluable not only for Russian students but also for students of all things Russian, whatever their specific academic field may be, and should be required reading for tourists and businessmen alike just to get their visas.

The Russian’s World is completely readable from cover to cover for the English-only reader, but since every term and concept is given also in accented Russian, the book becomes a goldmine of linguistic information for students of the Russian language. In fact, The Russian’s World is usable (no, not usable: ought to be used) on any level, from beginner to advanced; moreover, it will remain useful as a desk reference for a long time. There are some inherent conflicts between this "genre" and single authorship: the subject is so vast, one person cannot possibly cover it all; the subject so varied and containing so many contentious issues that the reader may not be well served if she gets basically one woman's opinion; personal idiosyncrasies of the author may cancel out the ideally objective reference character of the work. On the whole, Gerhart does very well: she makes no attempt to hide the fact that she collects her information from many sources; that the natives themselves often disagree; and that there is no illusion of completeness. This, and her sense of humor, help her navigate in this ocean of miscellaneous data, trying to cover everything from how to make a bed Russian-style to what to do before taking a trip to why Russians don't smile.

The physical dimensions of the new edition are nearly identical to the old one, except in thickness: its length has grown from ca. 250 pages to nearly 420. While the layout is essentially the same, typographically it is now generally prettier, somewhat more and better illustrated, but there is still no color. Instead of 12 chapters we now have 17, and 9 appendices replace the original 4. The s new chapters are those on "Conduct," "Medicine," "Food," "Communications," "Work and Money," and "Shopping," the first three being the most extensive and thorough, while the latter three could be ill further expanded. The chapter on "Holidays" has been enlarged to include more material on the church; and the chapter on "Animals" is now called "Nature" with new units on climate and the plant world, and is the longest chapter in the book (together with "Food"). The chapters on "Education" and "Speech" have been significantly revised, while the remaining ones underwent comparatively minor changes and updates. The new appendices include new business terms, the old (Petrine) Table of Ranks, a mini-bibliography of mostly dictionaries, and Maps. All four of the original appendices (Chemical Formulas, the Morse Code, the Braille Alphabet and an index of common Russian birds) have been preserved.

My informal survey of friends and colleagues in the profession suggests that many are not familiar with the first edition of The Russian’s World. This fact, coupled with the book's unusual character justifies a more detailed description of its contents. The first chapter starts with one of the best short summaries of the Russian character I have ever seen. It is followed by the basics on physical conduct (closeness, gestures), several pages of stock phrases (Hello! Excuse me ... ), a list of superstitions (broken mirror, shaking hands over the threshold), and an excursus into the dark realm of sex and mat, and ends with descriptions of the major events in human life: birth, wedding, death, and their associated ceremonies and terminologies. The second chapter on "The Human Being" is mostly on anatomy, with a little bit on hygiene, the famous bania, cosmetics, as well as charts on family relations. Next comes "Names" with lists and tables of all kinds of diminutives (can you produce 33 forms of "daddy" in Russian? know the difference between Vania and Van'ka?), and names of various social or ethnic origins (Tamara for princess, Isaak for Jew, Zosima for monk, Sozont for idiot Vladlen for Communist). The chapter "Clothing" predictably gives you list after list of names and pictures of you guessed what, including footware, uniforms, and even folk costumes. Here, as in the entire book, information is organized by topic, not by chronology: contemporary data is mixed with Soviet-era and pre- Soviet information. "Housing" covers everything from izba to communal apartment, from the traditional fortochka to the neo-traditional bomzh to how to set a contemporary table. The finger- licking chapter on "Food" makes you wish there was a good Russian restaurant nearby (or, en better, a babushka busy in the kitchen preparing one of those delicious dishes so lovingly described here). This is perhaps the richest chapter, about as comprehensive as one can be, given the restrictions of the size of the book. Starting with grains, and on to dairy, meat, vegetables, fruits, and berries, it goes all the way to seeds, seasonings, and spices. Then we learn about preservation, cooking, recipes, and meals, including the famous zakuski, the somewhat less reputable soups and kashi, and the infamous drinks, plus everything else in between (solianka to shashlyk, pirozhki to kompot). Having eaten too much naturally takes us to the next chapter on "Medicine" from where we go to "Work and Money," which appropriately starts with references to vziatka and nomenklatura. "Shopping" explains, among others, terms like blat, spekuliatsiia, and talon, and the difference between dostat' and kupit'. "Communications" takes you to the post office where you learn what the mailbox or the payphone look like, what kind of postal services are available, how to say "c/o" or "P.O. Box," how to write a business letter in Russian, and how to place a long-distance phone call or send a telegram. Then we read a little about radio and TV, the press, and in conclusion we make a brief visit to a library.

"Transportation" shows you "composted" tickets, jetons for the metro, a Russian pikap and gas station, road signs, major parts of an airplane, and even types of wagons and sleighs. Hitching a horse, hitchhiking, and driving habits are also briefly discussed, with alerts to second-class citizen pedestrians dutifully issued. "Education" gives tables describing levels (compared to the US), class hours per week per subject (K through 12), pictures of diplomas, lists of terms, even sample examination tests. "Speech" deals with styles, accents, mistakes natives make, the difference between ty and Vy, alphabets, interjections and "semi-words" ("oops!," "phew!"), and closes with long but far from exhaustive lists of expletives (Chert voz'mi!) and terms of rejection (negodiai!) and endearment (zolotko!). "Nature" is now the longest chapter, dealing with climate, seasons (quoting Pushkin and Tiutchev into the bargain), and vegetation zones, then tells you more than you ever wanted to know about plants (even weeds are not forgotten), and just when you thought you knew it all, an 8-page long index of plants is thrown in for good measure. Next comes fauna, pets, all kinds of dogs, cats, then worms, even leeches, and 29 kinds of insect, neatly grouped as harmless and harmful. Fish dominate the next four pages, followed by birds, until the mammals take over. In a drastic change the chapter on "Numbers" includes, in addition to mathematical formulas (long division in Russian!), much useful and important linguistic material. The subsection on "Measures" covers time (our "2 o'clock in the morning" becomes dva chasa nochi), dates (21/VIII/1995 or 21/08/95), and various other data: will you be hot if the weather is around 30 C"?-or disappointed if you find out that the measurements of the Russian Miss World 1992 was 88-60-90?--or nervous if your Russian friend is driving your car at 100 kph? It also teaches us how to say what we see on a barometer or a compass or a globe, and we learn about the decimal comma, the Roman numerals for months and centuries, and many other fundamentals that should be taught in first-year Russian (cross your sevens! no colon in time!). "Holidays and the Church" opens with contemporary holidays, moves on to the Christmas season and Easter under the heading "Traditional Popular or Folk Holidays" (!) and then onto church holidays (Assumption, saints' days, fasts). The new section on the "Church" explains some of the symbolism of church architecture, of icons, and of the entire iconostasis and is also informative on the clergy and the liturgy. And last but not least, chapter 17 on "Play" is about otdykh: vacations, leisure time, modern entertainment and traditional amusements, sports and children's games. Among the interesting lists not yet mentioned: common "personal" names associated with animals (horses, cows, bears, etc.); 15 bakery products (bread types); a "map" of meatcuts; old and new terminology (slang) for money (chervonets, shtuka); nomenclature for domestic animals (names for the female, the male, the young, e.g., cow, bull, calf, beef, ox, steer); how do animals talk and what do they say? (Russian sheep also bleat be- be); and how we talk to animals in Russian (translations of giddy-up, scat, etc.).

Gerhart is often best when she offers a mini-essay on a theme she enjoys describing. Commentary (her own or quoted) is often culturally revealing and hence very informative, as, for example, when she quotes a post-Soviet Russian on greed and money, or an American on North America as an olfactorily underdeveloped continent vis-a-vis smell-rich Russia. The three maps in Russian, both of the former Soviet territories and of the world, along with some commentary on the new-old, non-Soviet, names, are a very useful additional five pages (there were no maps in the first edition). A few more maps (on mountains, resources, ethnicity, perhaps some older ones showing different political boundaries, and even a standard Soviet one, so that the student could find Gor'ky or Sverdlovsk, not to mention Leningrad!)--as well as a glossary of stressed geographical names (with required prepositions: v or na)--would have been even better. Perhaps geography would have indeed deserved an entire chapter of its own or could have been a large supplement to the "Transportation" chapter. It is, after all, another rich source of basic (linguistic and cultural) knowledge that is "obvious" to the native speaker, but not to the foreigner. Every Russian understands the difference between russkii and rossiiskii, for example, and knows that somebody lives v Krymu or na Urale. There is also something we could call "conceptual" or cultural geography: concepts like zemliak or Sibir' or Arbat, not defined by political or geo-physical boundaries.

It is wonderful to now have indexes in both Russian and English, although unfortunately neither is nearly as comprehensive as it should be: many words, especially semi-words, phrases or idiomatic expressions, are missing, as are words from proverbs and quotations or material from the footnotes. The new edition contains many useful tables and lists but a table of tables and lists would have been practical. Both editions contain many pictures, and the second one on the whole probably improves on the first in this respect, but not nearly as much as it could have (look for example at the poor printed and almost unreadable photo on page 232). Occasionally the first edition is actually better in this respect, for example when the second edition replaces a quite serviceable and readable picture of a train schedule with two (!) unreadable photographs of those wall schedules that you see at Russian railway stations. Sometimes the otherwise excellent illustrative material isn't utilized as fully as it could have been. A picture of a bottle of riazhenka with no label is not nearly as informative as a picture of a bottle with a readable label would have been. Using photos of a train-ticket issued to the author, or of her friends and their belongings, is a nice personal touch when such usage makes no difference to the reader, as for example with the photograph of the interior of typical Russian kitchen or of a nice old lady offering a mile- high pile of pancakes with a huge grin on her face. This is less helpful, however, when choosing differently would have offered additional information, as for example in the case of the "squib" on tirazh at the end of Soviet books that is not explained as interestingly as it could have been, had a famous book been chosen as illustration. The schematic drawings of city transportation vehicles (bus, trolleybus, streetcar) are nice, but a whole page is used to explain a small difference; photographs of rundown, crowded busses and streetcars, or of a driver fixing his trolley's detached "ears"-a common sight--would have carried more information. There seems to be some inconsistency in captioning, too: some captions are in Russian, others in English, and some photos have none.

While The Russian’s World is generally excellent on matters of daily life and everyday culture and does a very good job covering as much as possible within the confines of a few hundred pages, there will always be inevitably a few themes or topics that a reader misses or wishes were dealt with more extensively. Here are a few such possible topics: attitude to medicine and doctors (with quotations from Tolstoy!); the Russian sense (or lack thereof) of time and timing; sex, gender and society (a great topic to combine linguistic and sociological musings on traditional male chauvinism); sexual mores (not just birth control, but also infidelity, etc.); bureaucracy and the obsession with stamps, permits, and with "ranks" and titles (a Soviet-era Table of Ranks?); and various minutiae of daily life (e.g., light switches, door knobs, electric and phone plugs). The subsection on "Where can we eat" could have told us more about eating out and partying culture, with a short examination of the reasons why there aren't many restaurants and especially European- style cafes and bars in Russia. A picture of a new restaurant menu--along with stories about the bad old days when you never minded the menu, you just asked the waiter what he's got--could be instructive as these days there may be some correlation between what the menu says and what the waiter is willing, or able, to serve.

The first, "Soviet-era" edition of The Russian’s World was rather skimpy on the church, concentrating on holidays like Easter and Christmas, and implicitly accepting the Soviet propaganda that religion was not a part of The Russian’s World any more. I think religion should have been given an entire chapter of its own in the second edition. Its connection to "holidays" is rather tenuous, to some even insulting. There is no need to be Orthodox, or even religious, to recognize the major role both the church as an institution and Orthodoxy as a religion played in Russian life and society. The new additional material is on the whole quite good. An expanded unit on the workplace and related matters (offices, factories, farms, secret workplaces [the so-called iashchiki], working habits, shopping while at work, storming, absenteeism, etc.) would have improved the "Work and Money" chapter, perhaps the weakest, and certainly the shortest, new chapter (or is this because work and money are among the weakest features of the Russian's life? And isn't the very connection between work and money an American [and not a Russian] idea? After all, you don't make money by working ... ). While the chapter on "Names" is rich in material on first names, it is less so on surnames. More commentary on common "religious" names (Voznesensky, Uspensky), on meaningful names (Pobedonostsev, Raskolnik--although Count Leo Fat is mentioned), on West European names (Lermontov, Blok, Lara Guichard), on names commonly recognized as ancient aristocratic ones (Golytsin, Vorontsov, Trubetskoi), and even a 2-3-page-long list of the 100-200 most common last names, with stress marks (and connotations if any) would have been a desirable addition. Russian proverbs have been included, scattered across the whole book, to illustrate traditions and mentality. Such use of proverbs and quotations from the classics and from the press is an excellent idea: one only wishes for more!

Organizing a volume of such diverse material is not easy, and Gerhart by and large has done a excellent job--therefore one is all the more puzzled to find the chapters on medicine and work in Part I, entitled "The Russian at Home." Medicine at home, yes, considering the reputation of Russian hospitals, but work? One wonders if there is not also a hidden reason for putting the section on "Gaming" in the chapter on work? Also, the index of birds is an appendix, yet a much longer index of plants is part of the text. Part I ("An Introduction to Expectations") has only one chapter in it (conduct), and is an ideal candidate for future expansion, perhaps along the lines of more socio-cultural speculations on the national character and cultural values. A list of the top 200-500 best known names, dates, titles, not knowing (or not having heard of) any of which would make one an ignorant person in Russia would be an interesting addition. Gerhart justifies some of her long and fairly exhaustive lists (of plants, insects, birds) by claiming--probably correctly--that every Russian would know or recognize them. Applying the same principle to matters of culture (both high and low) what I am suggesting here. Some would argue that this is difficult, if not impossible. But I think even in, post-Gutenberg America, with almost no commonly shared body of culture, such a list (granted, a very approximate list) can be made; after all, even if we don't take E.D. Hirsch's Dictionary of Cultural Literacy seriously, how do the producers know what puzzle or answer can be put on Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy?

Unfortunately the chapter in the first edition on "Abbreviations and Acronyms" was eliminated, replaced by a much shorter appendix. Hence, zapasnye chasti is still in the book, but the common abbreviated version zapchasti is not. The absence of a list of abbreviations and acronyms (with commentaries) is a bad loss, since this is the kind of information that is often hard to find in ordinary dictionaries. Sure enough, scholars and specialists have their own dictionaries of abbreviations, but The Russian’s World is not for them: the student, the businessman, or the serious but non-specialist reader need to be given more information than what is in the new edition. One of the new appendices is called "Suggestions for those in business," again clearly a sign of the times. Unfortunately, the excellent introductory remarks are much too short (roughly half a page) and the full page of new Russian words (nearly all taken from English) that follows is neither alphabetized, nor indexed, nor edited carefully (at least seven words occur twice!), nor are all its words--taksi, kollega, videokasseta--all that business related.

A fuller bibliography of references would also have been desirable. An entire paragraph is devoted to Paul Friedrich's classic essay on ty and Vy, but no mention is made of other, more recent or more comprehensive treatments, such as, for example, Bernard Comrie and Gerald Stone's chapter on "Modes of Address and Speech Etiquette" in their The Russian Language Since the Revolution (Oxford, 1978. Even the Ozhegov dictionary is ignored, and neither pictorial nor geographic dictionaries are mentioned. "For those who like the finer things in life," as the author puts it, a bibliography on literary studies is given (a mere three titles!), but no book on culture understood more broadly is mentioned, except for Irina Corten's Vocabulary of Soviet Society and Culture (Durham, 1992). The preface itself has been abridged, not entirely to its advantage, since the original gave a better explanation of the nature of this book, as well as more sources for the information. An important way a book like this can make itself even more indispensable is by offering a reliable and well- chosen guide to further reading. There are many additional sources of information for the student some of which are mentioned in the chapters, and others that could have been, even if they were not utilized, such as: readers or anthologies; high school and college textbooks, especially those intended for the non-Russian nationalities; foreigners' observations on Russian life and Russian reactions to them; French civilization books; German Landeskunde materials; pictorial encyclopedias, cultural atlases, a Duden, and the like. Emigre "guides" to (or post- Soviet articles on) life in the US in Russian can be remarkably useful not only linguistically, but also culturally. Such "reverse education," showing how Russians see us, reveals a great deal about both cultures, as Gerhart's own quoting from Vladimir Pozner proves.

But for me the most glaring omission is the almost complete absence of the rest of culture. For example, theater: I would have liked to see a monthly program poster, a diagram of the interior of a classical theater building, a description of going to the theater as a festive occasion, sometimes with champagne and a caviar sandwich during intermission, the lovely custom of giving flowers to the actors, lists of famous actors and the most popular theaters (even in America everybody knows "the Kirov"). Or cinema and television: why not include a movie program for the week, a TV listing, the test jargon (khit-parad, sharman-shou), etc. Dance, music, art, museums (perhaps they deserve more than a mention of tapochki!), the press, radio, even "thought" (philosophical, religious, political, should have gotten a little more attention. A glossary of cultural untranslatables (concepts and words, such as pravda-istina, lozh'-vran'e, poshlost', and the like) would have been an interesting addition; many good examples, with wonderful commentary, can be found in books like Ronald Hingley's The Russian Mind (New York, 1977) or in Svetlana Boym's Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge, 1994). I would have liked to see as well a broader presentation of the Russian's visual culture and of the visual world a Russian sees around himself--such things as architecture and cityscapes (commonly recognized buildings, statues, streets), "iconic" landscapes (rivers, mountains), emblems and logos of all kinds, and even interior images (from the past: a typical gentry mansion, for example). Famous art could have been used to illustrate all this as well as daily life, famous people and places, and rituals. (Surikov's painting The Conquest of Snow City is mentioned but not shown. I understand color is expensive. What I don't understand is why other publishers can produce more beautiful textbooks: Milner-Gulland's A Cultural Atlas of Russia and the Soviet Union manages to give us 214 color and 81 black-and-white illustrations in its 240 pages for a mere $10 more.)

In a publisher's questionnaire distributed before the second edition, this user recommended that the reader be given some idea of the different alphabets in use in Russia and also of the major orthographic conventions. The second edition does this, offering illustrations of glagolitsa, of pre-Revolutionary orthography, and of the use of the Roman alphabet in Russian. Yet a few small things (special letters like "No", quotation marks like <<the ones these words are enclosed in>>, using s p a c i n g instead of italics for emphasis) have been left out: a pity, especially in this age of desktop publishing, when typographical conventions are rapidly becoming common knowledge and many Russian publications are prepared on the computer. "Russian Pig Latin" is included for fun, although I for one would have preferred a sampler of either teenage language, so full of outlandish non- standard Americanisms, or criminal blatnoi language, some of which may be as important to know (passively, that is) as it is important to tell mat when you hear it. Other teaching material on both "life and language" in a very condensed form (from which the student would learn still another language of abbreviations!) that was not utilized are commercials and classified ads. Speaking from my own teaching experience, I would have found it very useful to have a side-by side illustration of entries from a Webster and a Russian tolkovyi slovar' with explanations and commentaries, as a short introduction to lexicography and its different traditions in English and in Russian. I would have also liked to see a couple of chapters translated into Russian (perhaps one printed on facing pages, another in an appendix?) for advanced students.

As far as vocabulary is concerned, the book will keep even an A student busy for years. Nevertheless, there are words I missed in their various categories. Here are a few examples: ei bogu, slovo er -s (sudar'), Rus', iurodivyi, katorga, chepukha, bezobrazie, budni, byt, sponsor, shopping, novye russkie, sovok, SKV, non- political meanings for torovarishch and tovarishchi. Capitalization of the names of days, months or nationalities and misplacing punctuation marks are also, in my experience, serious problems that my fourth-year students seem to be completely unprepared for, as if they have never heard that you practically always put a comma before such words as chto, kotoryi, no, and that you don't capitalize russkii. A sample English text misspelled and "mispunctuated" by Russian students of English might have helped to drive it home that this does make a difference. A russian sentence with commas, in all the wrong places is not, a russian sentence just like as someone said, "french without accent is not french".

High technology has not quite made it into this update as much as I would have liked: a mere one quarter of a single page is devoted to all modern forms of communication (telex, fax, and e- mail) and this tiny section appears to be also the only one offering any terminology on computers. This 1995 book still contains a picture of the Morse code, but no picture of a computer with a modem and a printer, showing the names of their parts ... Two excellent high-tech sources of Russia- and Russian related materials (RUSTEX-L and Friends and Partners) are, however, mentioned, and this may be more than enough to launch one on an exploration of Slavic cyberspace.

Shall we have to wait another twenty years for a third edition? Perhaps not! High tech might come to the rescue: why not update or expand parts of this book electronically? Such an update could start by using one of the better software programs to produce a more comprehensive index, which the publisher could then post on the Internet or even mail out to teachers. Such an update, especially if distributed only electronically, should cost next to nothing, yet would be of great practical value to all users, and presumably of great publicity value to the publisher. A teacher's manual with study aids and exercises would undoubtedly also be welcome. I am surprised that the publisher was apparently not interested in a CD-ROM-based interactive multimedia edition of this book, even though, thanks to its rich and varied contents, it would have been an ideal candidate for such an electronic version.

Most of the above remarks should not be construed as criticism by any means. They are ideas for a third edition--or make it my ideal version. Of course, another reader will wish for other additions and no one (including the author) can ever be completely satisfied. As textbooks go, The Russian’s World is still fairly thin and light, and as far as reference works are concerned, they are often ice the size of this book. It seems to me that another 100-200 pages could be added without making the volume too unwieldy or too heavy. Yet as it is, The Russian’s World is already nothing less than an outstanding achievement, chock full of extremely useful and indispensable information, and a must for students and teachers of things Russian, whether they are in academia or the business world. It's just that I can't have enough of a good thing: I would like it to be even fuller, even richer, even more comprehensive. I believe the entire profession should be grateful to Genevra Gerhart for sticking to her guns, for continuing her work on this enterprise (in spite of the relative neglect, apparently, of her book by the profession) and for bringing us this significantly updated and expanded second edition. I suppose the publisher, too, should be commended for publishing such an unusual kind of book-but also reprimanded for charging such a high price for it!