Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia

Perhaps it is fitting that this is Bruce Lincoln's twelfth and final book. He was a leading published scholar on Russia. This book is the most penetrating and comprehensive history of a very extraordinary City: Saint Petersburg (also known as Leningrad). Bruce Lincoln evokes the St. Petersburg and Russia of the not too distant past - a land of elegance, strength and beauty. He does reveal the wealth of natural forces that shaped its history. The rise of modern Russia is well documented also in this MUST READ book. Dag Stomberg St. Andrews, Scotland

It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of W. Bruce Lincoln, one of my favorite writers of history. His works on Russia have given me, time and again, new insight into that country, its people and history. This last work is another excellent example of his writing, marred only by what I think is some poor editing. I don't know at what stage of this work Mr. Lincoln died, but it appears that, if he had survived through the final editing stage this book would have been in a different form. There are more than a few redundancies, which should have been picked up by an alert editor, and I'm sure would have been by the author if he had been around to do so. That criticism aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this work, once again learning many new things about the Russian psyche, as brought forth through the history of St. Petersburg. There may be a bit too much about architecture in this work, but I consider it a "work in progress" that will now, unfortunately, never get into the final shape its author intended. It's a loss for all of us.