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An excerpt from Benson Bobrick’s new book, a memoir of his life and work as a writer.

When Tolstoy started Anna Karenina, he was forty-four. He guessed that he would finish the novel, conceived as only a novella, in two weeks. Anna Karenina took him more than four years.

As the stories for this issue coalesced, I realized that all of our long feature stories were actually about the same thing: the power of language and the elusiveness of truth.

We didn’t realize how connected we were until we had to disconnect.

Catherine I finds herself at a turning point upon the death of her husband, Peter the Great.

American bees are dying from mysterious causes, putting our agriculture at risk for lack of pollinators. Russian bees might be part of a solution.

Is Russia somehow different from other nations, or is it just like any other?

At a time when international travel has come to a screeching halt, I can think of little better service our magazine can provide than to take readers to far-flung places.