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The Ransom of Russian Art
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The Ransom of Russian Art Paperback - 1998

by John McPhee

In a suspenseful, chilling, and fascinating report like no other, bestselling author John McPhee investigates the plight of dissident Soviet artists and the American professor, Norton Dodge, who smuggled their work abroad. 40 color plates.


From the publisher

John McPhee's The Ransom of Russian Art is a suspenseful, chilling, and fascinating report on a covert operation like no other. It offers unprecedented insight into Soviet culture at the brink of the Union's collapse.

In the 1960s and 1970s, an American professor of Soviet economics forayed on his own in the Soviet Union, bought the work of underground "unofficial" artists, and brought it out himself or arranged to have it illegally shipped to the United States. Norton Dodge visited the apartments of unofficial artists in at least a dozen geographically scattered cities. By 1977, he had a thousand works of art. His ultimate window of interest involved the years from 1956 to 1986, and through his established contacts he eventually acquired another eight thousand works--by far the largest collection of its kind. McPhee investigates Dodge's clandestine activities in the service of dissident Soviet art, his motives for his work, and the fates of several of the artists whose lives he touched.

First line

Norton Townshend Dodge, born in Oklahoma City in 1927, first presented his curriculum vitae to officials of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the early spring of 1955.

Details

  • Title The Ransom of Russian Art
  • Author John McPhee
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 192
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York
  • Date 1998-01-30
  • ISBN 9780374524500 / 0374524505
  • Weight 0.6 lbs (0.27 kg)
  • Dimensions 7.93 x 5.03 x 0.46 in (20.14 x 12.78 x 1.17 cm)
  • Themes
    • Cultural Region: Russian
  • Library of Congress subjects Dissident art - Soviet Union, Dodge, Norton T - Art patronage
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 94014723
  • Dewey Decimal Code 709.47

About the author

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written nearly 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), The Founding Fish (2002), Uncommon Carriers (2007), and Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters with the Archdruid (1972) and The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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