About the book: 2002 / When a devastating famine hit Bolshevik Russia in 1921, the United States responded with a massive two-year mission to providing aid that fought hunger and disease and saved millions of lives. Some 300 American aid workers became the first outsiders to break through Russian isolation and witness and bear witness to a strange new phenomenon—Russian Bolshevism. This epic story is told as a sweeping American adventure novel, based largely on the diaries, memoirs, and letters of the American participants , who were a motley mixture of former "boobs," cowboys, and college students hungry for adventure after the Great War. The story is told in an anecdotal, even novelistic style, accessible to a wide range of readers. In addition to being a fascinating historical narrative, the book serves as a political and social history of the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, as well as an exploration of the roots of the fateful rivalry between the United States and the USSR that would dominate the second half of the twentieth century..