by Luigi Villari (Author), Graeme Newman (Introduction)

In 1905, a young Italian journalist and future diplomat set out across the Russian Empire in the immediate aftermath of a war that had just humiliated a great power and cracked open a century of imperial certainty. What he found — and photographed — became this book.

Luigi Villari traveled from the drawing rooms of St. Petersburg to the bazaars of Moscow, from the great fair at Nizhny Novgorod to the ironworks of the Donets basin, from monasteries outside Kiev to the tenements of factory towns, capturing a country lurching between old-world autocracy and the raw pressures of industrial change. He wrote about labor unrest and railway barons, about corrupt charity and courageous doctors, about the peasant's world and the aristocrat's, without ever losing the outsider's eye for telling detail. His account of Russian public opinion after the war — written before anyone could know how the story would end — reads today as a snapshot of a future still genuinely undecided.

This Read-Me.Org edition brings Villari's 1905 classic back into print for modern readers: fully re-edited and corrected, with US spelling and punctuation modernized throughout, Russian place and personal names standardized to current usage, and all 84 of Villari's original photographs restored in their original positions. A new introduction by Graeme R. Newman situates the book within the Russo-Japanese War, the 1905 Revolution, and the wave of foreign travel writing that tried to make sense of an empire already sliding toward collapse.

For readers of Russian history, travel literature, and the long run-up to 1917 — a firsthand report from a country that didn't yet know what was coming.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p.

Paul Miliukov (Author) Graeme Newman (Editor and Introduction)

Russia, To-Day and To-Morrow A Read-Me.Org Classic Reprint

In the winter of 1921, a defeated statesman stood before American audiences in Boston, New York, and Chicago and delivered one of the most extraordinary eyewitness accounts of the Russian Revolution ever recorded.

Paul N. Miliukov was no distant observer. As founder and leader of Russia's Constitutional Democratic Party — the "Kadets" — he spent two decades fighting for a liberal, constitutional Russia inside the Tsarist Dumas. When the monarchy finally fell in 1917, he became Foreign Minister of the new Provisional Government, only to be forced from office within ten weeks over his insistence that Russia honor its wartime commitments to the Allies. He watched the country he had tried to build collapse first into radicalism, then into Bolshevik dictatorship — and he lived to explain why.

Russia, To-Day and To-Morrow is his reckoning: a sweeping, first-hand analysis of why the Revolution could not be averted, how the Bolsheviks seized and held power, what their regime meant for Russia's many nationalities, and how the Civil War, foreign intervention, and the catastrophic famine of 1921 reshaped the country. Miliukov writes as a trained historian even as he writes as a casualty of the events he describes — a rare combination that makes this book both an argument and an irreplaceable primary source.

This edition presents Miliukov's original 1922 text in a newly reset, corrected format, with the original maps and statistical tables restored to their places in the narrative, and a new introduction situating the book — and its author — in their historical moment.

What's inside:

• Eleven chapters tracing the Revolution from its roots in Tsarist autocracy through the rise and "decline" of Bolshevism

• Eyewitness analysis of the 1917 Revolutions, the Civil War, and Anti-Bolshevist Russia

• A full chapter on the 1921 famine and its human toll

• Original maps of Anti-Bolshevist Russia, the Soviet famine zones, and Japanese-occupied Siberia

• Contemporary statistics on population, industry, agriculture, and education under Bolshevik rule

• A new scholarly introduction on Miliukov and his place in Russian history

For readers of Russian history, the Revolution, and the century of ideological conflict it set in motion, Russia, To-Day and To-Morrow offers something no later history can replace: the voice of a man who helped shape the events — and lost.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p.232.

Edited by Ray Perrault and Jack Clark

From the co-directors:

Although global private investment in AI decreased for the second consecutive year, investment in generative AI skyrocketed. More Fortune 500 earnings calls mentioned AI than ever before, and new studies show that AI tangibly boosts worker productivity. On the policymaking front, global mentions of AI in legislative proceedings have never been higher. U.S. regulators passed more AI-related regulations in 2023 than ever before. Still, many expressed concerns about AI’s ability to generate deepfakes and impact elections. The public became more aware of AI, and studies suggest that they responded with nervousness.

Stanford University Human Centered Artificial Intelligence. 2024. 502p.

By Steven Mello

While survey evidence suggests widespread financial fragility in the U.S., causal evidence on the implications of typical, negative income shocks is scarce. I estimate the impact of speeding fines on household finances using administrative traffic citation records and a panel of credit reports. Event studies reveal that fines averaging $195 are associated with a $34 increase in unpaid bills in collections. Given additional evidence that fine payment explains this effect and that default is the “last resort” for households, I interpret this finding as suggesting rates of inability to meet unplanned expenses which are consistent with the survey evidence. I also find that fines are associated with longer-run declines in credit scores, borrowing limits, and the likelihood of appearing as employed in payroll records covering a subset of large, high-paying employers. This impact on employment situations appears attributable to the diminished financial position of households rather than, e.g., downstream license suspensions.

Unpublished paper;