Traveling across the former Soviet Union is a challenge at the best of times—doing so in a dilapidated VW is just that much more of an adventure A chance job offer at a timber yard in Estonia gives Thom and his old pal Jo a taste for the unknown. So when Uncle Tony asks them to drive to Vladivostok for another job, they can’t think of a good reason why not. The result is a classic caper across the former Soviet Union in Max, a rusty old VW camper. Knowing little of the language or the geography ahead, they embark on probably the longest commute ever, encountering corrupt officials, film star mechanics, and over-friendly gangsters. Far off the tourist trail, they bear witness to the collapse of one nation and the birth of a new one during the free-for-all that was Russia in the 1990s.

A comprehensive history of the Sino-Russian border, one of the longest and most important land borders in the world The Sino-Russian border, once the world’s longest land border, has received scant attention in histories about the margins of empires. Beyond the Steppe Frontier rectifies this by exploring the demarcation’s remarkable transformation—from a vaguely marked frontier in the seventeenth century to its twentieth-century incarnation as a tightly patrolled barrier girded by watchtowers, barbed wire, and border guards. Through the perspectives of locals, including railroad employees, herdsmen, and smugglers from both sides, Sören Urbansky explores the daily life of communities and their entanglements with transnational and global flows of people, commodities, and ideas. Urbansky challenges top-down interpretations by stressing the significance of the local population in supporting, and undermining, border making. Because Russian, Chinese, and native worlds are intricately interwoven, national separations largely remained invisible at the border between the two largest Eurasian empires. This overlapping and mingling came to an end only when the border gained geopolitical significance during the twentieth century. Relying on a wealth of sources culled from little-known archives from across Eurasia, Urbansky demonstrates how states succeeded in suppressing traditional borderland cultures by cutting kin, cultural, economic, and religious connections across the state perimeter, through laws, physical force, deportation, reeducation, forced assimilation, and propaganda. Beyond the Steppe Frontier sheds critical new light on a pivotal geographical periphery and expands our understanding of how borders are determined.

Cause; a murder in Los Angeles. Effect; A summons from the Grand Regent. Jake Striker felt he needed to return to Mongolia to tell his in-laws how their daughter died. His wife, Chandaa, was killed by a drunk driver who ran a red light. The 911 Porsche was broadsided and his wife died instantly at an intersection in Beverly Hills. She had been with him when he finally located the mysterious Chang Jai Lamasery, high on Mt. Bayaskhulangtu. They had been searching for a child that was born at the exact instant the ancient Chang Lai Lama died. The Lamas believed the child was the reincarnation of their revered Grand Lama and were returning him to his rightful home. The parents of the child saw it as kidnapping. Chandaa’s parents live far out on the rolling steppes, where only personal communication is possible. Jake is tall, six feet, three inches, handsome with light brown hair and storm gray eyes. He had originally been hired by the parents to locate their child. Now he is back in Mongolia, comforting grieving in-laws. Chanda’s sister, Mei, a stunningly beautiful Mongolian woman, with Chinese ancestors, is with Jake in her parent’s ger when Lama Namsray arrives and tells Jake that the Grand Regent is in need of his services. Contacting the Grand Regent will require an arduous trek by horseback up into the sacred mountains, where only a privileged few are permitted. A steppe soldier is traveling with Lama Namsray, to protect him; armed with an AK47. Jake is a policeman turned lawyer and has the ear of the Grand Regent. One of the young men who was born in the mysterious valley has gone rogue and become a drug dealer and murderer in Southern California. He needs to be stopped and the Grand Regent is about to give Jake the assignment. Mei, who is twenty-five, with almond eyes and raven hair that hangs to her waist, informs Jake and Lama Namsray that she is going with them. The Lama tells her that will be impossible, outsiders are not allowed into the secret Lamasery. She informs him, “I’m going.” Lama Namsray, the second most powerful lama in the sacred dzong, explains that the Grand Regent would never permit it. Mei says, “I know about the gold mine, I know about the child Grand Lama and I know about the secret entrance into the valley. I’m going.” Jake sides with Mei and she accompanies him on the dangerous journey into the mountains. She also accompanies him to Southern California where they do battle with the drug lord and his thugs. Events become so dangerous they have to call upon the ancient Order of the Tu Tung. A mysterious Lamasery, a handsome lawyer, a beautiful Mongolian woman and a clandestine order of assassins, wrapped tightly together with dragon-emblazoned fabric from the Great Silk Road.

Feuillerat's edition of the complete works of Sir Philip Sidney in the series Cambridge English Classics has long been out of print. It has however been reissued with the omission of the poetical works. The prose works are divided among the four volumes as follows: volume 1, Arcadia, 1590; volume 2, Arcadia, 1593 and The Lady of May; volume 3, The Defences of Poesie, Political Discourses, Correspondence and Translation; volume 4, Arcadia (original version.)

Thom Wheeler is not a man to be put off by the prospect of an uncharted, impractical or downright dangerous journey. Having accidentally introduced his old school friend Vicky to Dmitry, the Russian love of her life, at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Thom decides to travel to their wedding in Astrakhan in the most obvious and straightforward way: by following the Volga river, from its source over 1,000 miles inland, all the way to the Caspian Sea and a party to remember..