Лучшие книги Маши Гессен

В 2002 году российский математик Григорий Перельман опубликовал в интернете доказательство гипотезы Пуанкаре - одной из семи "задач тысячелетия", за решение каждой из которых американский Институт Клэя установил премию в миллион долларов. Однако триумфа не получилось: Перельман не стал играть по правилам математического сообщества, отказался от работы в лучших университетах и, в конце концов, не принял "Премию тысячелетия". Ученый заявил, что больше не занимается математикой и прекратил общение с внешним миром.
Известный журналист и писатель, заместитель главного редактора проекта "Сноб" Маша Гессен исследует феномен Перельмана, основываясь на свидетельствах его учителей, коллег, одноклассников - и неопровержимых фактах. Книга Гессен не только четко и доступно объясняет, в чём суть прорыва, совершенного российским математиком, но и помогает понять логику гения и проникнуться к нему глубоким уважением.

С момента принятия туманно сформулированного закона о запрете "гомосексуальной пропаганды", в России ужесточились гомофобные атаки, увольнения и нападения на ЛГБТ-граждан. На почве действий российского правительства, уровень гомофобии в стране растет с каждым днем. Сегодня Россия, страна XXII зимних Олимпийских игр, находится в центре внимания международной прессы.

Since coming to power in 1999, Vladimir Putin has ruthlessly seized control of media, exiled or killed political rivals, and dismantled Russia's fragile electoral system. Masha Gessen courageously returned to Moscow to report on Putin's alarming ascent, tracking down sources who dared speak to no one else.

Putin's bestselling biographer reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. Hailed for her "fearless indictment of the most powerful man in Russia" by the Wall Street Journal, award-winning journalist Masha Gessen is unparalleled in her understanding of the events and forces that have…

On February 21st 2012, five members of an obscure feminist post-punk collective called Pussy Riot staged a performance in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Dressed in their trademark brightly coloured dresses and balaclavas, the women performed their song 'Punk Prayer - Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!' in front of the altar. The performance lasted only 40 seconds but it resulted in two-year prison sentences for three of the performers - and has turned Pussy Riot into one of the most well-known and important protest movements of the last five years. This necessary and timely book is an account of the Pussy Riot protest, the ensuing global support movement, and the tangled and controversial trial of the band members. It explores the status of dissent in Russia, the roots of the group and their adoption - or appropriation - by wider collectives, feminist groups and music icons. Masha Gessen has unique access to the band and those closest to them. Her unrivalled understanding of the Russian protest movement makes her the ideal writer to document and explain the rage, the beauty and the phenomenon that is Pussy Riot.

In 2006, an eccentric Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman solved one of the world's greatest intellectual puzzles. The Poincare conjecture is an extremely complex topological problem that had eluded the best minds for over a century. In 2000, the Clay Institute in Boston named it one of seven great unsolved mathematical problems, and promised a million dollars to anyone who could find a solution. Perelman was awarded the prize this year - and declined the money. Journalist Masha Gessen was determined to find out why. Drawing on interviews with Perelman's teachers, classmates, coaches, teammates, and colleagues in Russia and the US - and informed by her own background as a math whiz raised in Russia - she set out to uncover the nature of Perelman's astonishing abilities. In telling his story, Masha Gessen has constructed a gripping and tragic tale that sheds rare light on the unique burden of genius.

In 2004 genetic testing revealed that Masha Gessen had a mutation that predisposed her to ovarian and breast cancer. The discovery initiated Gessen into a club of sorts: the small (but exponentially expanding) group of people in possession of a new and different way of knowing themselves through what is inscribed in the strands of their DNA. As she wrestled with a wrenching personal decision—what to do with such knowledge—Gessen explored the landscape of this brave new world, speaking with others like her and with experts including medical researchers, historians, and religious thinkers.
Blood Matters is a much-needed field guide to this unfamiliar and unsettling territory. It explores the way genetic information is shaping the decisions we make, not only about our physical and emotional health but about whom we marry, the children we bear, even the personality traits we long to have. And it helps us come to terms with the radical transformation that genetic information is engineering in our most basic sense of who we are and what we might become.

Book DescriptionIn the 1930s, as waves of war and persecution were crashing over Europe, two young Jewish women began separate journeys of survival. One, a Polish-born woman from Bialystok, where virtually the entire Jewish community would soon be

From the acclaimed author of The Man Without a Face, the previously untold story of the Jews in twentieth-century Russia that reveals the complex, strange, and heart-wrenching truth behind the familiar narrative that begins with pogroms and ends with emigration.

In 1929, the Soviet government set aside a sparsely populated area in the Soviet Far East for settlement by Jews. The place was called Birobidzhan.The idea of an autonomous Jewish region was championed by Jewish Communists, Yiddishists, and intellectuals, who envisioned a haven of post-oppression Jewish culture. By the mid-1930s tens of thousands of Soviet Jews, as well as about a thousand Jews from abroad, had moved there. The state-building ended quickly, in the late 1930s, with arrests and purges instigated by Stalin. But after the Second World War, Birobidzhan received another influx of Jews—those who had been dispossessed by the war. In the late 1940s a second wave of arrests and imprisonments swept through the area, traumatizing Birobidzhan’s Jews into silence and effectively shutting down most of the Jewish cultural enterprises that had been created. Where the Jews Aren’t is a haunting account of the dream of Birobidzhan—and how it became the cracked and crooked mirror in which we can see the true story of the Jews in twentieth-century Russia.

Во многих редакциях считается, что успешный и состоявшийся в профессиональном смысле журналист снимает политические репортажи или пишет экономические обзоры. Это престижно. А вот социальные темы, или, как они называются на журналистском сленге, социалка, - удел неопытных журналистов или просто неудачников. Очень часто приходилось слышать слова редактора, обращенные к новому сотруднику: "Сними какую-нибудь социалку, ну там, брошенные дети, инвалиды, солдатские матери". И с этой установкой новоиспеченный журналист едет и "что-то" снимает. Без идеи, без интереса и без вдохновения.
Нам кажется такой подход несправедливым...