Hard Cover

Today I descended into the University of Chicago's Seminary Coop bookstore to check out new titles in Russian history and related subjects. Although I feel some guilt, I never buy much of anything at the bookstore: new books are just too expensive, and the plethora of choices overwhelms my decision-making faculties anyhow. I read outdated history--all in English--and even that task overtakes me. There's just too much out there. But looking at recent titles is even more intimidating. There are so many wonderful Russian history books being released each year, plus some classics that get re-translated or just re-published.

When I visit the Russian history collection at the Seminary bookstore, I feel very clandestine. All I really want to do is take a furtive photo of a few key shelves so I can remember what should go on my Christmas list next year. Feeling like a spy, I struggle to try to memorize everything before I leave the building but, sadly, I remember very little moments later. I do recall an entire row of Sheila Fitzpatrick books, Walter Benjamin's Moscow Diary, a relatively new Boym book called the Future of Nostalgia, books by gulag survivors, academic treatises on Soviet memoirs, Blum's book on Russian serfs and peasants, books on Soviet women, something on post-Soviet consumer fantasies, something else on the once-forbidden landscape of the Soviet Union, stuff on Herzen and Trotsky, a collection of Isaiah Berlin essays on the Soviet experiment, etc.

Somebody give me a cool thousand dollars and I'll carry that whole damned section of shiny new hard cover Soviet masterpieces up the cold, dank Seminary Coop steps to freedom.