George Feifer

George Feifer's books excel in their power to convey life abroad. Russians as well as Americans who lived in the Soviet Union recognize his MOSCOW FAREWELL as THE picture of life there during the Cold War and as an uncommonly sharp portrait of the Russian character that remains essentially unchanged today

Japanese as well as Americans who fought on Okinawa in 1945 hail his THE BATTLE OF OKINAWA: THE BLOOD AND THE BOMB as the most emotionally accurate - and moving - account of the gruesome combat there. Feifer's BREAKING OPEN JAPAN: COMMODORE PERRY, LORD ABE AND AMERICAN IMPERIALISM IN 1853 achieves some of the same qualities by telling the story of America's mid-19th-century opening of Japan from both sides, recording the losers' gall together with the winners' pride. THE GIRL FROM PETROVKA was the basis for a Hollywood movie.