Tales of Old Odessa (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780875803463)

Odessa - founded by Catherine the Great, who insisted that her port on the Black Sea be named in the feminine - earned it's reputation for vibrancy. Sophisticated yet untamed, lively but dangerous, Russia's warm water port for trade flirted coquettishly with the West. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the city had become a volatile modern metropolis with an ethnically diverse population and a growing middle class. Known as the little Paris of the tsarist empire, Odessa was distinctly un-Russian in manner and disposition and strikingly unlike other imperial cities. Tales of Old Odessa reveals the inner life of this remarkable city in the years before World War I from the perspective of the people who lived there. How did Odessans understand the city and their place in it? What cultural influences flavored their sensibilities and shaped their communities? What did modernization mean in Odessa?

Author: Roshanna Sylvester
ISBN-10: 0875803466
ISBN-13: 9780875803463
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
Language: English
Published: 09/22/2005
Pages: 254
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.23lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.40w x 0.88d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2006 pg. 2054
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2006 pg. 165