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 enlarge | Author: Christopher Robbins
Publisher: Atlas & Co.
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy New: $13.87
You Save: $10.13 (42%)
New (24) Used (13) from $9.98
Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 81562
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.2 x 5.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0977743381
Dewey Decimal Number: 915.845
EAN: 9780977743384
ASIN: 0977743381
Publication Date: April 21, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081130225628T
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| Customer Reviews:
 An absolute delight July 9, 2008
For anyone interested in this fascinating region, or the armchair traveler, this book is a must!
Amusing and educational: it fed my desire to visit Kazakhstan July 5, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is a strange mixture of a travelogue and an anecdotal history of Kazakhstan. Robbins characterizes Kazakhstan as an ancient country which has been long forgotten in the West, and he seeks to rediscover the diversity of its past and present.
He describes his travels from the wild steppes of the central country, to the old capital at Almaty, to the nightclubs of the brash new modern capital at Astana. As we travel, he provides interesting historical side stories on the Kazakhstan exiles of Trotsky, Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn; on Sakharov's witnessing of the first Soviet H-bomb tests; and on the horrific forced labor camps of Stalin's Gulag. He also recounts many other fragments of its history, not least that indeed "apples are from Kazakhstan".
As part of his visit, Robbins had multiple interviews with President Nazarbayev and was allowed to travel with him during a tour of some of Kazakhstan's remoter areas. Nazarbayev's quoted reminiscences are interesting, especially around the fall of the Soviet Union and the birth of independent Kazakhstan (although like all politician's memoirs, his words should probably be read cautiously). Robbins has clearly benefited from Nazarbayev's help and in return he is notably delicate in addressing potentially awkward issues. There have been allegations of significant high level corruption in Kazakhstan and of the forcible discouraging of political opposition, but those are not topics that Robbins dwells on.
On the plus side, Robbins has clearly fallen in love with Kazakhstan and he paints a broadly sympathetic picture of a country that has a difficult past, a beautiful but often, barren landscape, a climate of hot summers and extreme winters. He presents a country which is unusually tolerant and, with the benefit of oil wealth, is growing prosperous and (by the standards of the region) relatively open.
This is more of a travelogue than a deep history or social analysis, but I found it consistently interesting and educational, and often amusing. It left me with a much better sense of Kazakhstan's difficult history and of its relatively optimistic present.
 An Apple for the Author June 14, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
A valuable introduction to an important area of the world that most of us have neither been to nor know much about.
This standard, albeit well-written, travel book, with lots of local color, is made much more important by the inclusion of serious words on the tortured political evolution of Kazakhstan: the days of the Gulag; deadly nuclear testing; the virgin lands/ecological disasters; and the end game of the USSR. Mr. Robbins, an English observer quite positive about Kazakhstan and its current president, ends with finding the present to be a relatively bright time for the varied peoples residing in these vast and hard steppes.
(I think the dust jacket design by Yoshiki Waterhouse is excellent, as are the rough drawings that are planted throughout the text.)
Apples are from Kazakhstan May 21, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
What an excellent primer to the 'hidden' country of Kazakhstan. As a recent visitor, this book was an invaluable resource.
Great book May 18, 2008
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
Unless you are interested in Soviet history or Kazakhstan already, this book would probably not be that interesting. Since I am both a keen student of the former and relatively interested in the latter, I found this book fascinating.
I have been to Kazakhstan two years ago (on business), but as is usually the case with brief visits, I only saw what's obvious and superficial. This book was perfect as it dug deeper and explained a lot of what I saw.
The author does a good job keeping it lively and interesting, his style remind me of Bill Bryce's travelogues. My only note (and I read the British edition, it may have been changed in the US) is that the book is somewhat rambling. The author follows a personal narrative ("I did this, saw that") but it jumps around in a non-linear fashion, so you are not exactly sure when things are taking place and what season it is. And some poor editing as well, I think the story about the President's youth is repeated a couple times.
Lastly - the attitude towards the President seems overly diffident. I agree with the author that the country owes most of its recent progress to him, but I think a more neutral tone could be achieved. Given the history of Western writers being smitten by Soviet dictators (I am implying the analogy), I think one should tread carefully.
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