Garden of Broken Statues

“Marianna Tax Choldin has written a delightful memoir that enlightens us on many topics: censorship, librarianship, Russian culture, and the special challenge of combining motherhood and scholarship. One of our leading Slavic librarians, she long ago left her mark on her profession, and now she beautifully widens that influence.” -- Loren Graham, author of Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union
“Marianna Tax Choldin’s luminous Garden of Broken Statues takes the reader on a deeply personal journal that compellingly exposes the pernicious effects of censorship and the authoritarian impulses it reveals on ordinary human beings from Chicago to Tobolsk, with innumerable stops in between. Witness to some of the late twentieth century’s seminal events, Choldin translates the heroic through the private, revealing with knowing hand, how the genuinely historic is always deeply secluded in the fates of individual human beings.” -- Blair A. Ruble, Vice President for Programs, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C.
“Marianna Tax Choldin has written a memoir of emotional intensity, intellectual depth, and professional expertise on censorship in the Soviet Union and Russia. The book is a wide sweep of personal ties, political and social context, and the changing meaning of public monuments. With a passionate commitment to freedom of speech, the author describes the difficulties and rewards of mounting exhibitions about censorship to a public from whom what has been left out, deliberately mistranslated, or forbidden altogether has been hidden.” -- Ellen Mickiewicz, author of No Illusions: The Voices of Russia’s Future Leaders
“Garden of Broken Statues: Exploring Censorship in Russia covers a lot of territory: geographically, from Hyde Park to Moscow to East Bangladesh; ideologically, from Soviet “omni-censorship” to the less systemic challenges to free speech we find in the States; and, above all, interpersonally, as Choldin pays tribute to the people who have shaped her life ... it’s such a wide-ranging book, it might be recommended not only to those interested in Russia or censorship, but also just about all readers of this journal: namely, librarians and information professionals curious about the personal and professional lives of those who have committed the better part of their lives to the cause of international understanding.” -- Scott Schoger, World Libraries Vol 22. No. 1 (2016)