With formidable scholarship and considerable dry wit, William Pokhlebkin, one of Russia's best-known historians sets out on the detective trail. His aim: to rev

Russia is famous for its vodka, and its culture of extreme intoxication. But just as vodka is central to the lives of many Russians, it is also central to under

Vodka is the most versatile of spirits. While people in Eastern Europe and the Baltic often drink it neat, swallowing it in one gulp, others use it in cocktails

It began as poisonous rotgut in Medieval Russia—Ivan the Terrible liked it, Peter the Great loved it—but this grain alcohol “without distinctive character

Born in a Russian village in 1831, Pyotr Smirnov relied on vodka to turn a life of scarcity and anonymity into one of immense wealth and international recogniti