How did a tablecloth embroidered in the village of Kadom end up on the table of the English queen? Why was Michurin expelled from the Pronsk gymnasium? Why did a landowner from Yelatma decide to fly to the moon, and how did it end? Continuing his artistic exploration of the Russian hinterland, begun in 'Unprintable Gingerbread,' Mikhail Baru writes new, witty essays about lesser-known towns and villages—Sergach, Skopin, Mikhailov, Zavolzhsk, Shatsk, and others—creating his own Illustrated Chronicle, his own Tsar Book of the Russian provinces. Behind the modest provincial façade of these towns, one often finds not only the charm of local color but also traces of a great history: the fates of these settlements, like their inhabitants, are rich in dramatic events, and the changes of eras, wars, and other national tragedies were experienced here no less intensely than in the capitals. Through these stories of small and very small towns, like through the glass of a kaleidoscope, the pattern of our shared historical destiny unfolds. Mikhail Baru is a poet, novelist, translator, chemical engineer, and author of 'Unprintable Gingerbread,' published by NLO.