Cybriwsky deserves praise for his astute, captivating, and perceptive study - an indispensable introduction to present-day Kyiv and its people.
Ihor Stebelsky, University of Windsor for The AAG Review of Books [-][-] A staggeringly detailed portrait of the city at the heart of Ukraine's tortured existence
Robert Legvold for Foreign Affairs [-][-] This is a valuable and ... Read moretimely book.
P.E. Heineman, University of Maryland University College for CHOICEconnect [-][-] Real stuff. Roman Cybriwsky knows this city and its people, speaks their language, feels their frustrations with its opportunist and corrupt post-Soviet public figures - one hesitates to dignify them as leaders - who have bankrupted this land morally and economically.[-]From beneath, embers of his authorial rage stoke this fine urban ethnography. Cybriwsky has an eye for the telling vignette, and he cares deeply about this place. He writes with liveliness, occasional dark humor, and with - to employ a term cheapened by contemporary overuse, but here fully apt - passion. Read this.
John Charles Western, Professor of Geography, Syracuse University, USA [-][-] Roman Cybriwsky has produced an interdisciplinary tour de force: a scholarly book that is also an anthropological and sociological study of Kyivites, a guide to Kyiv and its society, politics, and culture, and a journalistic investigation of the city's darkest secrets. At this time of crisis, hope, and fear in Ukraine, Cybriwsky's book is indispensable.
Alexander Motyl, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University, USA [-][-] Kyiv's history is rich with complexity, its cultural contributions multifaceted, and its physical form enchanting and intricate. Yet those with custodianship for its fate since the collapse of the Soviet Union have been negligent at best in their management of the city. Cybriwsky explains why the city should be of such great interests to urbanists everywhere, and how the city's mismanagement in recent years helped create a civic revolt which led to the collapse of a corrupt national government. Filled with personal observations by a highly trained and intelligent urbanist, Cybriwsky's study explores how cities assume symbolic meaning which re-creates how residents think about themselves. Kyiv, Ukraine: The City of Domes and Demons is a beautiful and powerful work that reveals profound truths about a city we all need to know better.
Blair A Ruble, Vice President for Programs, Woodrow Wilson Center[-][-] [-][-] Cybriwsky himself is a strong voice throughout the volume, using his position as a multi-lingual Ukrainian-American scholar to gain various vantage points depending on the context and his interlocutors.
Emily Channell-Justice, Canadian-American Slavic Studies[-][-] [-][-] Resourceful and full of life, this book will be useful to all Ukraine specialists, just as much as historians of Eastern Europe, geographers, ethnographers, city planners and architects, political and social scientists, and of course travellers and interested members of the public. - Europe-Asia Studies Show Less