Pushkin's Button (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780226857718)

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

Author: Serena Vitale
ISBN-10: 0226857719
ISBN-13: 9780226857718
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 05/15/2000
Pages: 355
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.07lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.08w x 0.79d

Review Citation(s):
New York Times 08/06/2000 pg. 24
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2000 pg. 176