Authors: Stephen Miller
Troyat, Henriâ
Daily Life in Russia Under the Last Tsar
, translated by Malcolm Barnes, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1961. A fictionalized Baedeker of everyday life. Set primarily in Moscow.
Fay, Sidney B.â
The Origins of the World War
, Second edition, The Free Press, New York, 1966.
Lincoln, W. Bruceâ
In War's Dark Shadow: The Russians Before the Great War
, The Dial Press, New York, 1983. Also his Sunlight at Midnight. Lincoln is always thorough and readable. One of the basics.
Gilfond, Henryâ
Black Hand at Sarajevo
, Bobbs-Merrill, New York, 1975, Hertha Pauli's
The Secret of Sarajevo
, Appleton-Century, New York, 1965, and Lavender Cassels's
The Archduke and the Assassin
, Dorset, New York, 1984. All were good for details of the assassination.
Morton, Fredericâ
Thunder at Twilight, Vienna 1913â1914
, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1989. Dramatic portrait of Austria in the months before the war.
Taylor, EdmundâT
he Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order, 1905â1922
, Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1963. Especially good on the HartwigâArtamonovâApis plot.
Vassilyev, A.T. and Rene Fullop-Millerâ
Ochrana: The Russian Secret Police
, J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1930. Fullop-Miller, the co-writer, points out that Vassilyev must be taken with several grains of salt. Self-justifying memoir of the Okhrana by its last commander in St Petersburg.
Volkov, Solomonâ
St Petersburg: A Cultural History
, The Free Press, New York, 1995. Excellent.
West, Rebeccaâ
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
, Viking Press, New York, 1940. For background of Balkan struggles and later perspectives on the assassination.
Bely, Andreiâ
Petersburg
, translated, annotated and introduced by Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1978. Bely's novel came out in serial form during 1913, but was neglected during the Soviet era. Bely's appeal rests on his intricate wordplay which is lost in most translations, thus
Petersburg
has been underrated abroad. Maguire's and Malmstad's extensive notes were invaluable.
Finally, the first draft of
The Field of Mars
was completed shortly after the death of my father, Wendell Richard Miller. A fine man, my father was a history buff; his interests spanned mostly American history from the Revolution to World War II, and it is from him that I derive my own love of the past. âSpud' was a larger-than-life character, a man with a multitude of interests and multitudes of friends. I find that I miss him very much as the years go by, and one book is not enough to dedicate to his memory.