This textbook contains basic information on the main sections of fundamental and clinical neurology and neurosurgery. It provides up-to-date information on the anatomy, development and morphofunctional foundations of the nervous system; semiotics of neurological disorders; methods of examination of patients. The material on the etiology, pathogenesis and clinical picture of the most signifi cant and common diseases of the central and peripheral nervous system is presented; the fundamental principles of their topical and nosological diagnosis are laid down. Modern approaches to the prevention and treatment (conservative and surgical) of the main forms of neurological pathology, issues of rehabilitation and medical and social expertise are highlighted. The textbook is intended for medical students, junior physicians and residents studying neurology and neurosurgery.

This textbook contains basic information on the main sections of fundamental and clinical neurology and neurosurgery. It provides up-to-date information on the anatomy, development and morphofunctional foundations of the nervous system; semiotics of neurological disorders; methods of examination of patients. The material on the etiology, pathogenesis and clinical picture of the most signifi cant and common diseases of the central and peripheral nervous system is presented; the fundamental principles of their topical and nosological diagnosis are laid down. Modern approaches to the prevention and treatment (conservative and surgical) of the main forms of neurological pathology, issues of rehabilitation and medical and social expertise are highlighted. The textbook is intended for medical students, junior physicians and residents studying neurology and neurosurgery.

Aleksandr made a silent promise to the Lord. God would deliver him - would deliver Russia - and he would make Russia into the country that the Almighty wanted it to be. He would be delivered from the destruction that wasteth at noonday, and from the pestilence that walketh in darkness - the terror by night ... 1825. Russia has been at peace for a decade. Bonaparte is long dead and the threat of invasion is no more. For Colonel Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, life is calm. The French have been defeated, as have the twelve monstrous creatures he once fought alongside, and then against, all those years before. His duty is still to his tsar, Aleksandr the First, but today the enemy is merely human. However, the tsar himself knows he can never be at peace. He is well aware of the uprising fermenting within his own army, but his true fear is of something far more terrible - something that threatens to bring damnation upon him, his family and his country. Aleksandr cannot forget a promise: a promise sealed in blood ... and broken a hundred years before. Now the victim of the Romanovs' betrayal has returned to demand what is his. The knowledge chills Aleksandr's very soul. And for Aleksei, it seems the vile pestilence that once threatened all he held dear has returned, thirteen years later ...

Beautifully illustrated, here is the most comprehensive collection of classic Russian tales available in English. This comprehensive collection introduces readers to universal fairy-tale figures and to such uniquely Russian characters such as Koshchey the Deathless, Baba Yaga, the Swan Maiden, and the glorious Firebird. The more than 175 tales culled from a landmark multi-volume collection by the outstanding Russian ethnographer Aleksandr Afanasev reveal a rich, robust world of the imagination.

Beautifully illustrated, here is the most comprehensive collection of classic Russian tales available in English. This comprehensive collection introduces readers to universal fairy-tale figures and to such uniquely Russian characters such as Koshchey the Deathless, Baba Yaga, the Swan Maiden, and the glorious Firebird. The more than 175 tales culled from a landmark multi-volume collection by the outstanding Russian ethnographer Aleksandr Afanasev reveal a rich, robust world of the imagination.

A vast canvas of camps, prisons, transit centres and secret police, of informers and spies and interrogators but also of everyday heroism, The Gulag Archipelago is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s grand masterwork. Based on the testimony of some 200 survivors, and on the recollection of Solzhenitsyn’s own eleven years in labour camps and exile, it chronicles the story of those at the heart of the Soviet Union who opposed Stalin, and for whom the key to survival lay not in hope but in despair. A thoroughly researched document and a feat of literary and imaginative power, this edition of The Gulag Archipelago was abridged into one volume at the author’s wish and with his full co-operation.

A vast canvas of camps, prisons, transit centres and secret police, of informers and spies and interrogators but also of everyday heroism, The Gulag Archipelago is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s grand masterwork. Based on the testimony of some 200 survivors, and on the recollection of Solzhenitsyn’s own eleven years in labour camps and exile, it chronicles the story of those at the heart of the Soviet Union who opposed Stalin, and for whom the key to survival lay not in hope but in despair. A thoroughly researched document and a feat of literary and imaginative power, this edition of The Gulag Archipelago was abridged into one volume at the author’s wish and with his full co-operation.

Naturally Veronika is stunned when she does wake up--at Villete, a local mental hospital, where the staff informs her that she has, in fact, partially succeeded in achieving her goal. While the overdose didnt kill Veronika immediately, the medication has damaged her heart so severely that she has only days to live. The story follows Veronika through the intense week of self-discovery that ensues. To her surprise, Veronika finds herself drawn to the confinement of Villete and its patients, who, each in his or her individual way, reflect the heart of human experience. In the heightened state of lifes final moments, Veronika discovers things she has never really allowed herself to feel before--hatred, fear, curiosity, love, and sexual awakening. She finds that every second of her existence is a choice between living and dying, and at the eleventh hour emerges more open to life than ever before. In Veronika Decides to Die, Paulo Coelho takes reader on a distinctly modern quest to find meaning in a culture overshadowed by angst, soulless routine, and pervasive conformity. Based on events in Coelhos own life, Veronkia Decides to Die questions the meaning of madness and celebrates individuals who do not fit into patterns society considers to be normal. Poignant and illuminating, it is a dazzling portrait of a young woman at the crossroads of despair and liberation, and a poetic, exuberant appreciation of each day as a renewed opportunity.

Naturally Veronika is stunned when she does wake up--at Villete, a local mental hospital, where the staff informs her that she has, in fact, partially succeeded in achieving her goal. While the overdose didnt kill Veronika immediately, the medication has damaged her heart so severely that she has only days to live. The story follows Veronika through the intense week of self-discovery that ensues. To her surprise, Veronika finds herself drawn to the confinement of Villete and its patients, who, each in his or her individual way, reflect the heart of human experience. In the heightened state of lifes final moments, Veronika discovers things she has never really allowed herself to feel before--hatred, fear, curiosity, love, and sexual awakening. She finds that every second of her existence is a choice between living and dying, and at the eleventh hour emerges more open to life than ever before. In Veronika Decides to Die, Paulo Coelho takes reader on a distinctly modern quest to find meaning in a culture overshadowed by angst, soulless routine, and pervasive conformity. Based on events in Coelhos own life, Veronkia Decides to Die questions the meaning of madness and celebrates individuals who do not fit into patterns society considers to be normal. Poignant and illuminating, it is a dazzling portrait of a young woman at the crossroads of despair and liberation, and a poetic, exuberant appreciation of each day as a renewed opportunity.

Veronika has everything she could wish for - young and pretty, with plenty of attractive boyfriends, a steady job, a loving family. Yet Veronika is not happy and one winter's morning she takes an overdose of sleeping pills, only to wake up some time later in the local hospital. There she is told that her heart is now irreparably damaged and she has only a few days to live... Through these intense days Veronika comes to realize that every second of existence is a choice we all make between living and dying. This is a moving and uplifting song to life, one that reminds us that every moment in our lives is special and precious.

'Welcome readers of all sizes! I think you are opening this very special book with feeling of great excitement. It has everything you could want in a story: Suspense! Action! Huge Braveness! And very importantly a hero of great handsomeness!' When Aleksandr discovers that the stinky half metal, half mongoose scoundrel that is evil Doctor Robogoose has captured his beloved meerkat, Princess Maiya, he has to don his Turbo-Charged Flying Cape and swoop to the rescue. Will our favourite meerkat be successful? Will he save the girl and see the wind make patterns in her soft fur..?

Two small masterpieces in one volume. First, The Double, a surprisingly modern hallucinatory nightmare that foreshadows Kafka and Sartre. A minor official named Goliadkin becomes aware of a mysterious doppelganger - a man who has his name and his face and who gradually and relentlessly begins to displace him with his friends and colleagues. In the dilemma of his increasingly paranoid hero, Dostoevsky makes vividly concrete the inner plurality of consciousness that would become a major theme of his work. Second, The Gambler, a stunning psychological portrait of a young man's exhilarating and destructive addiction, a compulsion that Dostoevsky - who once gambled away his wife's wedding ring- knew intimately from his own experience. In the disastrous love affairs and gambling adventures of Alexei Ivanovich, Dostoevsky explores the irresistible temptation to look into the abyss of ultimate risk that he believed was an essential part of the Russian national character.

When young programmer Alexander Ivanovich Privalov picks up two hitchhikers while driving in Karelia, he is drawn into the mysterious world of the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy, where research into magic is serious business. And where science, sorcery and socialism meet, can chaos be far behind?