Red Blues (Ellis Island Series) - Hardcover

The twentieth century has witnessed three great waves of Russian immigration to the United States. The first wave followed the Russian Revolution of 1917. Joseph Stalin's tyrannical rule was the cause of the second wave during the late 1940s and early 1950s. And then the third wave came, beginning with the age of glastnost and perestroika in the mid-1980s, and continuing to this day. In Red Blues, Dennis Shasha and Marina Shron have brought us a fascinating collection of personal stories told by those who are part of this third wave. Through their varied lifestyles and experiences these immigrants tell of a common juxtaposition between life in the former Soviet Union, which was materially poor but often culturally and personally rich, with life in the United States, which can be comparatively chaotic and uncomfortable but ultimately offers far greater opportunities. The voices we hear come from a diverse group of personalities who tell their stories with no holds barred. The reader is given views of both the United States and Russia from a very unusual perspective-the honest words of strong people who have survived in both cultures.

Dennis Shasha is a professor at New York University's Courant Institute where he does research on biological pattern discovery, combinatorial pattern matching on trees and graphs, software support for the exploration of unfamiliar databases, database tuning, and database design for time series. He is the author of several books and many journal articles and conference papers. At present, Professor Shasha writes the monthly puzzle column for Scientific American and Dr. Dobb's Journal. Marina Shron was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia. She moved to New York in 1992. She is primarily a playwright and her works include King of Rats, Christinia, and Time and the Beast. Ms. Shron has won numerous awards for her work, including the Jerome Fellowship and the NYFA Fellowship. She is currently Playwright-in-Residence at the James Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio. Upon her return she will again be a resident of New York, where she will teach writing at the New School.