Kirjahaku

Between 1917-1920 - from the Bolshevik Revolution to the definitive statement of American opposition to Bolshevik Russia - Soviets and Americans searched for ways to effect meaningful interaction between the nations in the absence of formal diplomatic relations. During these years wide-ranging discussions occurred on a variety of serious issues, from military collaboration and economic relations to the comprehensive settlement of political and military disputes. At the same time extensive debates took place in both countries about the nature of the relations between them. As McFadden shows in this pathbreaking book, based on research in Soviet archives, as well as previously unused private collections and government archives in the United States and Great Britain, a surprising number of concrete agreements were reached between the two countries, including continued operation of the American Red Cross in Russia, the transfer of war materials from the Russian army to the Americans, the sale of strategic supplies of platinum from the Bolsheviks to the United States, the exemption of a number of American corporations from Soviety nationalization, and the numerous trade contracts betwen the Soviet government and American firms. Numerous imkportant diplomats and politicians were involved in these negotiations. Most of the details, characters and nature of these discussions and their efforts have previously been overlooked or downplayed by historians. In the post-Cold War era, such a re-evaluation should have special relevance. re-evaluation of this critical period, McFadden shows how a surprising number of concrete agreements were reached between the two nations, and the relevance of this in light of current events such as glasnost.

David McFadden has set for himself, in this sequence of one hundred poems, a task both breathtaking in its scope and stunning in its accomplishment. By echoing with his gypsy guitar the troubadour tradition of the Languedoc, the great sonnet sequences of Petrarch and Shakespeare, the redefinitions of beauty and truth of the romantics, and the distractions and fragments of the post-moderns, he has created a celebration of the beloved in which recognition, intelligence and wit illuminate each sentimental, awkward, humorous, everyday moment. The elements of romance and betrayal in these poems shine through the darkness of their passion with a lucid, conscious attentiveness seldom seen since the great renaissance poets.

There'll Be Another delivers on the promise of the title: It is actually three books of poems in one, each offering the reader the unique new opening of an entirely different language. The first, Heavy-Hearted in Havana, is made up of a series of poems written during McFadden's sojourn in Cuba in the spring of 1994. His observations on the decaying realities of the populist revolution launched by Fidel Castro are coloured by one of the key poems in this section, "The Death of Greg Curnoe," a lament for the author's friend and collaborator who died in a cycling accident in 1992. The second, Sex With a Sixteen Year Old, is a series of chiefly narrative poems dealing with the experience of being a reclusive, solitary poet living in Toronto where the solitary exercise of the poetic imagination leads inevitably to thought crimes. The third, Anonymity Suite Part II, is an unexpected extension of the highly formalist series of poems that appeared in the book Anonymity Suite in 1992. These poems tend toward the impersonal and are more inspired by cultural history than by immediate experience or solitary reflection.

Specially edited, updated, revised and rewritten by the author, and for the first time complete in one volume, Great Lakes Suite includes A Trip Around Lake Ontario, first published in 1988, as well as A Trip Around Lake Erie and A Trip Around Lake Huron, both of which were first published in 1980. These books have come alive in a remarkable way and have made the whole much more than merely the sum of its parts. They have become funnier, sadder, more inter-connected, more spiritual, more sure of themselves. They sparkle from beginning to end with a new depth and resonance. They represent a time that is no more, an idyllic time (so it seems now) before the differences between Canada and the U.S. became so small as to be a joke. The years since they first appeared have been kind to these books and McFadden's extensive reworking of the texts has given them a heightened sheen.

The poems in this third volume of McFadden's Terrafina Trilogy--which began with Gypsy Guitar and There'll be Another--suggest the earth is an exotic way station, a hotel.

Although there have been many studies of U.S.–Soviet diplomacy in the twentieth century, most explorations of people-to-people diplomacy begin in the 1980s and to not take into account the early contacts in the revolutionary period and 1920s. This study explores in greater depth the religious figures, radical activists, entrepreneurs, engineers, social workers, and others in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union who reached across the barriers of ideology and culture and history to forge tentative but real human connections in an attempt to further better understanding between the two countries. All of these efforts prefigured the much more heralded "citizen diplomacy" efforts of the 1980s, which helped end the Cold War.

Although there have been many studies of U.S.–Soviet diplomacy in the twentieth century, most explorations of people-to-people diplomacy begin in the 1980s and to not take into account the early contacts in the revolutionary period and 1920s. This study explores in greater depth the religious figures, radical activists, entrepreneurs, engineers, social workers, and others in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union who reached across the barriers of ideology and culture and history to forge tentative but real human connections in an attempt to further better understanding between the two countries. All of these efforts prefigured the much more heralded "citizen diplomacy" efforts of the 1980s, which helped end the Cold War.