Library of contemporary Soviet novels

The rise and near-success of Mike Freesmith, who tries to gain control of California politics by exploiting the fears and hatreds of voting groups.

"Not an easy book to analyze but it has a curious fascination --this story of Sanya Grigorav, his early days in Moscow of the Revolution, his family life, his schooling at the Children's Shelter. The years at the university in Leningrad reflect the changing viewpoint of the Russian intellectual in the late '20's. The thread holding the reminiscences together is the Saint Maria, lost in a polar expedition, and eventually solved Sanya's training as Flight Pilot rounds out the book."--Kirkus.

Out of the darkest depths of life, where vice and crime and misery abound, comes the Byron of the twentieth century, the poet of the vagabond and the proletariat, Maxim Gorky. Not like the beggar, humbly imploring for a crust in the name of the Lord, nor like the jeweller displaying his precious stones to dazzle and tempt the eye, he comes to the world, - nay, in accents of Tyrtaeus this commoner of Nizhni Novgorod spurs on his troops of freedom-loving heroes to conquer, as it were, the placid, self- satisfied literatures of to-day, and bring new life to pale, bloodless frames.