Julia Bekman Chadaga s ambitious study posits that glass in its uses as a material and as captured in culture is a key to understanding the evolution of Russian identity from the eighteenth century onward. From the contemporary perspective, it is easy to overlook how glass has profoundly transformed vision. Chadaga shows the far-reaching effects of this phenomenon. Her book examines the similarities between glass and language, the ideological uses of glass, and the material s associations with modernity, while illuminating the work of Lomonosov, Dostoevsky, Zamyatin, and Eisenstein, among...