Pushkin's Button recreates the four months of Pushkin's life leading up to the fatal duel in the snow on January 27, 1837. Many theories have been advanced about the death of one of Russia's greatest artists, none of them wholly satisfactory. Serena Vitale has opened the archives and studies the case more closely, and more imaginatively, than anyone before her. Her brilliant detective work unearths fascinating, revealing details, including a button missing from Pushkin's Kamerjunker uniform. "Pushkin's Button will keep all constituencies of reader fastened to their seats, as they watch Petersburg's lofty denizens leave no moment of the hurtling Pushkin scandal unrecorded or not speculated on."—Monika Greenleaf,Los Angeles Times "[A] deliciously entertaining whydunit, a book in which every page seduces with a riddle. . . . Vivacious, seductive, original."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post "A delightful combination of retrograde pleasures (court balls, the demise of a doomed genius) and primary sources. . . . Illuminating."—Richard Lamb, New York Times Book Review "A book almost impossible to put down."—George Steiner, New Yorker

Pushkin's Button

Biographies & Memoirs

Vitale, Serena

Arts & Literature

University of Chicago Press

Traces the last four months of the revered Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, who died from wounds received in a duel with a French officer

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

"Shklovsky: Witness to an Era" is a blend of riotous anecdote, personal history, and literary reflection, collecting interviews with Viktor Shklovsky conducted by scholar Serena Vitale in the '70s, toward the end of the great critic's life, and in the face of interference and even veiled threats of violence from the Soviet government. Shklovsky's answers are wonderfully intimate, focusing particularly on the years of the early Soviet avant-garde, and his relationships with such figures as Eisenstein and Mayakovsky. Bearing witness to a vanished age whose promise ended in despair, Shklovsky is in great form throughout, summing up a century of triumphs and disappointments, personal and historical.

Shklovsky: Witness to an Era (Russian Literature)

Shklovskii, Viktor

Dalkey Archive Press

. with dustjacket, 199, clean bright copy

PUSHKIN'S BUTTON

Fourth Estate

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Vitale, Serena. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Vitale, Serena

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Vitale, Serena. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Pushkin's Button

Pushkin's Button

Shklovsky: Witness to an Era (Russian Literature)

PUSHKIN'S BUTTON