Compulsively Aimless

Part two of my two part list of Russia books.  Weighted heavily toward Siberia but this may be appropriate in proportion to of Siberia's to the rest of Russia .  1.  Tent Life in Siberia: and Adventures Among the Koraks and other Tribes in Kamtchatka and Northern Asia, George Kennan (1870).   At age 20, Kennan, contracted with a an American telegraph company to  build a telegraph line across Siberia in the 1860s.  The telegraph line was never completed but his resulting account is a detailed travelogue about local customs, language, customs, Siberian tribes, volcanoes of Russia's most remote regions.  He traveled Siberia with wandering natives on dogsleds living in yurts and eating local foods, starving at times, camping under snowdrifts at fifty below zero.  Cousin to George Kennan, the Father of Containment.  See also Exiles and Gulags...for another of this books on the Russian Exile system.   This is one of my most priz...