Author: Alena V. Ledeneva File Type: pdf During the Soviet era, blatthe use of personal networks for obtaining goods and services in short supply and for circumventing formal procedureswas necessary to compensate for the inefficiencies of socialism. The collapse of the Soviet Union produced a new generation of informal practices. In How Russia Really Works, Alena V. Ledeneva explores practices in politics, business, media, and the legal sphere in Russia in the 1990sfrom the hiring of firms to create negative publicity about ones competitors, to inventing novel schemes of tax evasion and engaging in alternative techniques of contract and law enforcement. Ledeneva discovers ingenuity, wit, and vigor in these activities and argues that they simultaneously support and subvert formal institutions. They enable corporations, the media, politicians, and businessmen to operate in the post-Soviet labyrinth of legal and practical constraints but consistently undermine the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. The know-how Ledeneva describes in this book continues to operate today and is crucial to understanding contemporary Russia. **

Author: Tommy Tomlinson File Type: epub Powerful...A funny and moving account of what life is like for someone who carries extra weight. Garden & Gun The government definition of obesity is a body mass index of 30 or more. My BMI is 60.7. My shirts are size XXXXXXL, which the big-and-tall stores shorten to 6X. Im 6-foot-1, or 73 inches tall. My waist is 60 inches around. Im nearly a sphere. Those are the numbers. This is how it feelsSo begins The Elephant in the Room, Tommy Tomlinsons remarkably intimate and insightful memoir of his life as a fat man. When he was almost fifty years old, Tomlinson weighed an astonishingand dangerous460 pounds, at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, unable to climb a flight of stairs without having to catch his breath, or travel on an airplane without buying two seats. Raised in a family that loved food, he had been aware of the problem for years, seeing doctors and trying diets from the time he was a preteen. But nothing worked, and every time he tried to make a change, it didnt go the way he plannedin fact, he wasnt sure that he really wanted to change. In The Elephant in the Room, Tomlinson chronicles his lifelong battle with weight in a voice that combines the urgency of Roxane Gays Hunger with the intimacy of Rick Braggs All Over but the Shoutin. He also hits the road to meet other members of the plus-sized tribe in an attempt to understand how, as a nation, we got to this point. From buying a FitBit and setting exercise goals to contemplating the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, Americas capital of food porn, and modifying his own diet, Tomlinson brings us along on a candid and sometimes brutal look at the everyday experience of being constantly aware of your size. Over the course of the book, he confronts these issues head-on and chronicles the practical steps he has to takebig and smallto lose weight by the end. Affecting and searingly honest, The Elephant in the Room is a powerful memoir that will resonate with anyone who has grappled with addiction, shame, or self-consciousness. It is also a literary triumph that will stay with readers long after the last page.