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Mir Books – Books from the Soviet Era

mirtitles.org

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Re: Mir Books – Books from the Soviet Era

#41

Post by yantrams »

bebe9494i4 wrote: post #39
smath wrote: post #34

Very fond memories of Mir Publishers' science and math books growing up in India in the 80s and 90s. I think English translations were freely available in India. My grandfather would buy them for me to encourage my interest in science and math. If I could find physical copies of those books I would buy them in a heartbeat today. Slight digression: Russian cartoons from that era are also very interesting. One of my fa…

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While that maybe true ( I know some folks who are reprinting them ), the translated editions from those days were all printed in USSR at Mir / Raduga / Progress presses itself. We've even had poets, writers and other luminaries from India visit Moscow for this and other things as part of cultural initiatives.

Re: Mir Books – Books from the Soviet Era

#45

Post by JKCalhoun »

the-mitr wrote: post #42

Maintainer/curator of the blog here. Please feel free to ask anything. Glad to see this on the front page on HN, we had a similar bump some years back!

Very cool.

(Love to also see a collection of Soviet Life magazine. What's out there, that I have been able to find, is pretty slim.)

Re: Mir Books – Books from the Soviet Era

#46

Post by vhantz »

vlian2088 wrote: post #36
asxndu wrote: post #3

Quick question. What do soviets make great researchers? I noticed this pattern in ml, math & physics research. Is it that they have better quality books?

mostly because people had no option to leave the country. also the salaries of scientists and engineers were notoriously shitty, so only those with passion for the subject studied it.

Good thing we've overcome that! Today, in the land of the free, researchers' passion is rewarded with good salaries and working conditions. Right?

Re: Mir Books – Books from the Soviet Era

#47

Post by shash »

These were big in India until the mid-90s. I recall one book of "tales from the Baltic states" which we had at home. There were others, but I can't remember the titles very well. And for stuff coming from the Soviet era, they were remarkably non-judgy about the Tsareivichs and Tsarinas who inhabited the tales...

On the technical front, one book that I fondly recall, but I haven't seen since is Experiments Without Explosion by O.M.Olgin: https://archive.org/details/ExperimentsWithoutExplosions The title, as well as the content...

Re: Mir Books – Books from the Soviet Era

#48

Post by vlian2088 »

vhantz wrote: post #46
vlian2088 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mostly because people had no option to leave the country. also the salaries of scientists and engineers were notoriously shitty, so only those with passion for the subject studied it.

Good thing we've overcome that! Today, in the land of the free, researchers' passion is rewarded with good salaries and working conditions. Right?

I assure you that Soviets did not have the kind of ```science``` that is temporarily defunded in the US.

Re: Mir Books – Books from the Soviet Era

#50

Post by hliyan »

We had these in Sri Lanka, some of it translated to the local language and published by local publishers. I can't remember whether it was specifically a Mir publication, but I have fond memories of Y. Perelman's Mathematics can be Fun -- beautifully printed and hardbound, with meticulously drawn line art illustrations covering various applications of mathematics.
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