The Complete Far Side by Gary Larson (ISBN: 978-1-4494-6004-4) contains every single panel from the comic, which ran from 1979 to 1995. It is not really a book, but three books in a set. The comics are presented more or less in chronological order, so the reader can see how Larson’s style evolved during the early years. There is really not a whole lot to include in an overview of a collection of comics, and that is the case here. There is an eclectic collection of dinosaurs, cows (especially cows), squid, doctors, scientists, space aliens, chickens, dogs, and mailmen, among others. The jokes range from rather macabre stuff to funny plays on words or a surrealist or absurdist take on a famous saying or proverb. Every so often, there are pop culture references that are sometimes hard to get (at least for someone like myself who has never been big on pop culture and always has to look names and titles up when crossword puzzles reference these in clues). The drawing style is unique with the always obese-looking characters and simply drawn animals, scenery, and other settings, but it’s a classic, and having every panel in one place is nice.As expected, the set was amazing. I have two complaints about it, though. First, unlike the complete Calvin and Hobbes collection, the Far Side collection does not seem to include cover artwork from the various compilations released, so I wouldn’t really call it the “complete” collection. Second, the layout was not very well done. There was a ton of whitespace on each page, and it seemed to be that the cartoons were printed too small. Other than those things, it’s an amazing read that one cannot do while others are trying to sleep or while in public: it results in way too many laugh-out-loud moments. It’s kind of an expensive collection, even when bought as paperback instead of hardcover, it was well worth it for the laughs and nostalgia every time one opens it, even if only for a page or two of reading.
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The Czech Black Book, edited by Robert Littell, is a collection of original source documents from the first week of the invasion. There are press releases, official announcements, and news stories that were curated in response to Russian propaganda that claimed Russia and other Warsaw Pact countries came to Czechoslovakia to help and at the request of the Czechoslovaks (the Russians called their collection the White Book, hence the Czech one being black). The documents from the Czechs show a much different picture. The news reports feature interviews of high-level Czechoslovaks as well as from men on the street, and the feeling is that they simply wanted to be left alone and chart their own course through history unhindered by the Russians, whom they had previously considered friends. There was often a feeling expressed that the invasion had done unrepairable damage to that relationship. The government press releases and communiqués showed a government united around the reformers in the Czechoslovak Communist Party and a total disdain for the few leaders who preferred the Russian socialist path. The Czechoslovak leaders weren’t ready to throw communism or socialism away (it reminded me of Gorbachev a little), but they certainly wanted to be able to choose their own way, and the Russians weren’t ready for their satellites to have that level of independence. Trade unions, clubs, and other organizations also called on the citizens of Czechoslovakia to resist the invaders, although not violently, but by the interesting peaceful means of ignoring them. They were to refuse to help the Russians whenever possible, to continue their everyday lives as if nothing was happening around them since strikes and other resistance would simply give the Russians the excuse they needed to escalate the action. Even when a few Czechoslovak citizens lost their lives, were arrested, or otherwise assaulted, the general population kept its cool, and the Czechoslovak leaders attributed the end of the invasion, in large part, to this reaction (or non-reaction, as the case may be) by the people. In the end, negotiations were carried out, and the invaders left, although not under the conditions that the Czechoslovaks would’ve desired.
Русская Прага (Russian Prague, my translation) by Natalya Ivanovna Komandorova (ISBN: 978-5-9533-3746-5) presents an overview of some of the common history between Russia and the Czech Republic. It starts in tsarist times and ends with a small section about post-Communist interaction between the two countries. The medieval links between the two countries were focused largely on trade with a little religion thrown in, typical for a time when church and state were intimately intertwined. The many interfamilial marriages and constantly changing alliances during the 1700s and 1800s resulted in some interaction between the two nations, and academic and intellectual interests were added to the subjects of correspondence. These reasons for a Russian presence in what was then Czechoslovakia exploded in the early 1900s as Russia experienced what is nowadays referred to as brain drain when the Bolsheviks came to power. Czechoslovakia, and Prague in particular, proved to be a welcoming place for Russian academics, politicians, and intellectuals who wanted to escape persecution and restrictions on their freedoms in Soviet Russia. There were links between the two countries in the post-World War II era, too, but they tended to be less positive. The Soviets worked to keep tabs on and even control the Russian diaspora. Russian-Czechoslovak relations took a hit they would never really recover from when the Soviets invaded in 1968. Modern relations between the two countries have returned to the medieval focus on trade with a significant level of distrust toward the Russians on the part of many Czechs.