Julia meets all kinds of people on the shores of the Black Sea to practice speaking Russian with.

Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1891 and died inMoscow, Russia in 1940. He died from a kidney disease inherited from his father. He was only 48 years old. He was a physician but decided to devote his time to writing. He wrote a lot about the horrors of the Russian civil war (November, 1917 to October 1922). He is famous for writing ‘A Dog’s Heart’ , 'The White Guard' and ‘The Master and Margarita’which was published after he died.

The Red Crown takes place during the Russian civil war. Approximately 10 million people were killed, most of them civilians. It is a dramatic story about a man who went in search of his younger brother at the behest of hismother. He found his brother who was on his way into battle. The man waited for his brother to return. When he did, the man’s life and his mind were devastated forever.

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri and died in Connecticut in 1910. In 1909 Mark Twain made this comment “I came in with Halley's Comet, It is coming again next year. The Almighty has said, no doubt, 'Now there are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together. '” He died on April 21, 1910—one day after the comet had once again reached its perihelion. He is best known for his novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885).

In 1883, Mark Twain, the American writer, humorist and essayist wrote an autobiography entitled Life on the Mississippi. This is an excerpt from that book called Two Ways of seeing a River. It is about the difference in our perspective from seeing something for the first time that captivates and enchants us to losing that charming view of it due to familiarity and a deeper understanding of its essence. He asks the question do you gain or lose by this insight?

Theodore Dreiser was an American writer born in Indiana in 1871 and died in Hollywood, California in 1945. He was best known for his novels “An American Tragedy” based on the murder of Grace Brown in Upstate New York in 1906, and “Sister Carrie”. Both novels were made into movies. He grew up extremely poor and was the 12th child of 13 children. His father was a German immigrant. His mother was Mennonite.

H L Menken scholar and critic wrote, “He was a man of large originality, of profound feeling, and of unshakable courage. All of us who write are better off because he lived, worked, and hoped."

Change is an essay about change and why we should love it or at least, not fear it.

In 1861, a Union officer named Sullivan Ballou, assigned to the Grand Army of The Potomac, wrote home to his wife in Smithfield, Rhode Island. He has a wife and two sons waiting for him at home. In the event of his death, he hopes that this letter will ease her pain. He does everything he can to give her comfort and encouragement. It is one of the most noble things I have ever read. What stands out is not only his love and commitment to his wife but also to his country. He states that he fights because of those who fought before him in the American Revolution, and he cannot let them down. You can imagine his wife reading these words and being heart broken but at the same time so proud of her husband.

Squeaker’s Mate is about Squeaker, a lazy, conniving, good for nothing husband, and his mate, a strong woman who is capable, conscientious and does all the work whenever they go out on a job. She suffers a severe work-related injury, and becomes incapacitated; unable to work. Squeaker, true to his nature, takes the easy way out, neglecting and abusing her in the process. However, the woman has another mate who has seen and heard everything, who has been with her from the very start. He thinks, that given half the chance, he might just settle the score.

The Soviet Union ceased to exist on New Year’s Eve, 1991. The new country, called the Russian Federation, was set to embrace democracy and a market economy. The problem was that no one had any idea how to transform the world’s largest country into a free market state. And, what’s more, there was no historical precedent for this. What ensued was severe economic chaos. Essential items for everyday life were unavailable in traditional retail stores. The entire system of distributing goods around the country had disintegrated. Russia’s GDP fell by 50% between 1992 and 1998. This was worse than what Americans went through during the Great Depression.

Julia steps into this world like a babe in the woods. She meets the family she’ll be staying with: Nina, Nina’s mother Anna, and Nina’s 4 children.

O. Henry was born William Sydney Porter in North Carolina in 1862 and died in New York City in 1910 at the age of 47. In 1895, he was charged with embezzlement and fled to the Honduras where he started to write a novel in which he coined the term, “banana republic”. He returned to the States when he found out that his wife was dying of tuberculosis. He started to serve his 5 year prison sentence in 1898 but was let out on good behavior. He married a second time but she left him after 2 years. He had 2 children.

The Skylight Room was written at a time when it was common for people to rent a room in a house instead of rent an apartment. Since there was no welfare, no unemployment insurance, no help at all from the government, and no credit cards, people had to make due with what they could afford. And for many, including doctors and dentists, this was a room. In this story, a young woman works hard and fails to get by suffering the consequences. Along the way she rents a room with a view of the stars. If she cannot reach for them, at least she can gaze at them.