Download St Petersburg Madness Murder and Art on the Banks of the Neva Jonathan Miles Books

Product details Paperback 560 pages Publisher Pegasus Books; 1 edition (May 14, 2019) Language English ISBN-10 1643131567

St Petersburg Madness Murder and Art on the Banks of the Neva Jonathan Miles Books Reviews

• Not direct
• Excellent, well written, great history!!
• Great book!
• Throughout this wonderful book I could not decide whether my ranking would ultimately be a 4 or a 5. But when I got the last chapter, I realized that Miles has truly saved the best for last, and knew it was, overall, a solid 5. His prose is consistently luminous; this is prose that soars but is nowhere even remotely pretentious. His information is impressively researched and clearly presented. Early on (p. 60), he tells us that St. Petersburg is "a place where high winds carried the groans of dying Russian labourers and the lilt of European minuets." He ends (the words that solidified my rating) with these sublime images "Dwarfed by the immensity of Senate Square, . . . Falconer's Peter [the famed Bronze Horseman statue] seems hardly up to the job. If he dismounted, he'd stagger off--like a drunkard trying to walk the straight line, his dubious legacy 300 years of murderous desire." And St. Petersburg is "a mirage, a magnificent Atlantis, an impossible metropolis rising from the mists, which the mud and the mire keep trying to reclaim." These are magnificent sentences. This was not an easy read, but it rewarded marvelously, powerfully as I read. If you are seeking a political history or a military history, this may not be your book, although Miles provides ample material on both areas, as ancillary to cultural shifts and events. He is a cultural historian, and I found that quite satisfying and rewarding. If you have any doubt of the magnificence of this work, go to a bookstore, sit in a quiet corner, and read his final chapter. I believe you will then justifiably decide on the spot to buy it. You will not be disappointed.