Essad Bey, the sickly son of an oil millionaire from Baku, Azerbaijan, receives permission from his father to spend the summer with his "milk brother” Ali Khan, passing the holiday in his home village in the wild Caucasus. So the two set out, under the custody of a wise attendant, into an archaic world in which chivalry counted more than buying power and poets were more highly regarded than princes – into a country in which, as a kind of curiosity shop of world history, all that is outlived and forgotten was loyally preserved. This is Essad Bey’s second book, which was first published in 1930. In it the author draws upon his Oriental imaginative powers, conjuring a vast panorama of the Caucasus, its people and customs. The result is a fresh and densely atmospheric work, even if not always laying claim to scientific accuracy. Often adding a touch of imagination, the author succeeds in bringing the heart and soul of this archaic world to life, which he had himself experienced and learned to love as a child.

In 1994, the mountain territory of Chechnya was witness to the largest military campaign staged on Russian soil since World War II. The Russo-Chechen war is examined within the context of the bitter history between the two peoples, culminating in the expression of conflict from 1994-1996.

In his lively and witty quasi-autobiography, Essad Bey tells us the story of his childhood in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and of his flight from the Russian Revolution in 1917, which brought him through half the Orient, through the Caucasus, then to Istanbul - where this book concludes - and finally to Berlin.

A thrilling page-turner of epic proportions, Tom Reiss’s panoramic bestseller tells the true story of a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince in Nazi Germany. Lev Nussimbaum escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan and, as “Essad Bey,” became a celebrated author with the enduring novel Ali and Nino as well as an adventurer, a real-life Indiana Jones with a fatal secret. Reiss pursued Lev’s story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal–and sometimes as heartbreaking–as his subject’s life.

A memoir of life in Georgia after the fall of Communism introduces readers to the memorable, and sometimes insane, people who struggled to dominate the republics--and survive in them--after the decline of Soviet power.

This book examines how the Russian Empire expanded across the barrier of the Caucasus mountains to take control of the Georgian lands at the close of the eighteenth century. With no organized plan for conquest, Imperial policy fluctuated based both on personnel changes in the Imperial government and strategic re-evaluations of Imperial interests. Particular attention is paid to the role of two significant individuals - Princes Potemkin and Tsitsianov - in pushing the Empire toward total incorporation.

This volume provides a ready introduction and practical guide to the Chechen people, including chapters on history, religion, politics, economy, culture, literature and media.

Homeland, Exile, Imagined Homelands are features of the modern experience and relate to the cultural and historical dilemmas of loss, nostalgia, utopia, travel, longing, and are central for Jews and others. This book is an exploration into a world of boundary crossings and of desired places and alternate identities, into a world of adopted kin and invented allegiances.

"That Black Earth is an extraordinary work is, for anyone who has known Russia, beyond question."—George Kennan "A compassionate glimpse into the extremes where the new Russia meets the old," writes Robert Legvold (Foreign Affairs) about Andrew Meier's enthralling new work. Journeying across a resurgent and reputedly free land, Meier has produced a virtuosic mix of nuanced history, lyric travelogue, and unflinching reportage. Throughout, Meier captures the country's present limbo—a land rich in potential but on the brink of staggering back into tyranny—in an account that is by turns heartrending and celebratory, comic and terrifying. A 2003 New York Public Library Book to Remember. "Black Earth is the best investigation of post-Soviet Russia since David Remnick's Resurrection. Andrew Meier is a truly penetrating eyewitness."—Robert Conquest, author of The Great Terror; "If President Bush were to read only the chapters regarding Chechnya in Meier's Black Earth, he would gain a priceless education about Putin's Russia."—Zbigniew Brzezinski "Even after the fall of Communism, most American reporting on Russia often goes no further than who's in and who's out in the Kremlin and the business oligarchy. Andrew Meier's Russia reaches far beyond . . . this Russia is one where, as Meier says, history has a hard time hiding. Readers could not easily find a livelier or more insightful guide."—Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost and The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin "From the pointless war in Chechnya to the wild, exhilarating, and dispiriting East and the rise of Vladimir Putin, the former KGB officer—it's all here in great detail, written in the layers the story deserves, with insight, passion, and genuine affection."—Michael Specter, staff writer, The New Yorker; co-chief, The New York Times Moscow Bureau, 1995-98. "[Meier's] knowledge of the country and his abiding love for its people stands out on every page of this book....But it is his linguistic fluency, in particular, which enables Mr. Meier to dig so deeply into Russia's black earth."—The Economist "A wonderful travelogue that depicts the Russian people yet again trying to build a new life without really changing their old one."—William Taubman, The New York Times Book Review.