Book 1. In Russia (1970s-1980s)
Book 2. From America (1990s-2000s)

Mikhail Epstein, a philosopher and a cultural and literary scholar, has been a member of the Soviet Writers' Union in Moscow since 1978. He has been Professor of Cultural Theory and Russian literature at Emory University in Atlanta (USA) since 1990.

This collection of approximately 150 essays written from 1977 to 2003 covers a most turbulent period in the history of two great civilizations as they have been moving rapidly from the cold war confrontation to the present political openness and cultural dialogue. The essays are informed by the personal impressions of the author, who finds himself at the crossroads of the two cultures after his relocation from  Russia to America in 1990.

Mikhail Epstein's essays implement an "auto-analytical" approach, combining elements of cultural  research and  lyrical introspection. In this sense, their genre is reminiscent of Roland Barthes' Mythologies.  For  Epstein, the essay  is part confession, part discursive argument, and part narrative; it is like a diary, a scholarly article, and a story all in one. The essay is experimental mythology, the truth of a gradual and unfinalizable approximation to myth, not the lie of a totalizing coincidence with it.  Essayism is directed against the plurality of fragmented particulars as well as against the centripetal tendencies of a cognitive totalitarianism; it combines  boldness of propositions and meekness of conclusions.

The titles of the two books, "In Russia" and "From America," are asymmetrical.  The first book explores the public and private aspects of Russian cultural space in the 1970s and 1980s. The task is both to deconstruct the dominant Soviet myths and to construct new lyrical mythology based on authorship, not authority. The topics cover various archetypes and rituals of Soviet everyday life, such as standing in line, sports fanaticism, workaholicism, and cults of political heroes. They also embrace moral,  psychological, and aesthetic issues, such as love, motherhood, poetry, and provincial anguish, viewed through the prism of late Soviet decadence.

The second book focuses on Russian and American cultures as they view and mirror each other. The new Russia is emerging as a mediator between the two oppositional symbolic systems, totalitarianism and democracy. Finding itself in transition, post-Soviet Russia is often warped by these competing tendencies, exposing phantasmagoric intersections of incompatible cultural codes. These oddities and  paradoxes, proceeding from Russia's intensive  "Americanization" and "de-Sovietization," stand as one of the collection's foci. The topics of the second book range from the meaning of dinosaurs in contemporary American mass culture (as a symbolic substitute for a historic past) to apocalyptic visions in contemporary Russia. The fields of comparison include: nature and landscapes,  people and the state, cultural symbolism and language,  social rituals, private life, and religious beliefs. The new Russian consciousness assimilates American images and ideals in order to transcend its own Soviet past, thus interiorizing what had been held for decades as the archetypal "Other."

Thus, the essaystic mosaic of this collection creates a  panoramic view of the two cultures and two epochs, divided by the historical watershed of 1991.