Mark D. Steinberg, Fin de Siecle. 416 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. ISBN-13978-0300165043. $45.00. The historiography of St. has been enriched by Mark D. Steinberg's new book, Fin de Siecle. Over last few decades, three Western works have opened new vistas for this particular branch of scholarship by their innovative approaches: James H. Bater's St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change, Karl Schlogel's The Laboratory of Modernism: St. Petersburg, 1909-1921, and Katerina Clark's Petersburg: Crucible of Revolution. (1) The titles of three books denote three distinct approaches to study of city. Clark's book, written after collapse of Soviet Union, accounts, moreover, for revival of studies in Russia while engaging in critical dialogue with proponents of Petersburg myth. By juxtaposing intellectuals with mandarins of German universities, Clark follows those American historians of cities who reject idea of Sonderweg in favor of comparative and global vision. Steinberg embraces same tradition. Indeed, very title of his book is direct allusion to Carl E. Schorske's Fin-de-siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture, thus suggesting imperial capital should be seen as variation on theme rather than as unique. (2) According to Steinberg, St. is a natural place for thinking about Russia and modern experience and for inscribing Russian urban into modernity of European cities (1). Steinberg's previous works, particularly Russian-language volume co-edited with Boris Kolonitskii in 2009, have paved way for this new enterprise. (3) The subject seems all more important today, since cities once again feature in headlines, and urban classes, having caught up with civilization of free market, seem ready to measure up to challenges of modernity posed by 21st century. It is not an easy task to extract features of culture from urban fabric nourishes it. The problem is one of method rather than definition. To establish connection between modernity and transformative Steinberg proposes an examination of the relationship between words and matter--that is, words that arose and did their interpreting work in material (4). Yet material city itself remains relatively marginal in his book. The bulk of work is focused on words and stories of convey public thought and opinion about urban life (7). Steinberg's method consists of defining linguistic field of modernity as present in canonical Western texts and then identifying targeted vocabulary in various urban texts produced in at beginning of 20th century. Steinberg's thesis is in (and thus in Russia) perception of urban modernity conformed with framework of modern European mind and indeed reflected European preoccupations in more intensified form because of country's position on periphery of Europe and its backwardness (a term Steinberg sometimes places in quotation marks, and at other times does not). The book is divided into seven chapters. City, Streets, Death, Decadence, Happiness, and Melancholy. The City chapter dwells on physical growth of St. and its modernization, as well as on increasingly dark representation of city in literature and urban journalism at end of 19th century. The role of urban journalism is discussed more thoroughly in chapter Streets. Here Steinberg considers press as part of street life. He proposes press helped draw city's map and in sense became both record of street spectacle and constituent part of it. In chapter Masks, author regards masks as, on one hand, symbol of modernity's epistemological crisis, of modern desire to make world ordered and legible (85) and, on other, as powerful symbols of ubiquity of deception and illusion, and behind this, of even deeper 'abyss' of uncertainty and unknown (86). …