“In the current climate in the West, with the return to an awareness of Russia being coupled with a renewed sense of threat, William Craft Brumfield's work is a major catalyst for making people aware of the richness of Russian culture. Journeys through the Russian Empire is an innovative book and an invaluable resource for coming generations of cultural historians. Allowing an opportunity to consider loss over time and to think in terms of common human values, it is indispensable to both Russophiles and all those interested in wider issues of restoration, plans for public space, the impact of industrialization and modernization, and the consequences of large-scale population migration.” — Ann Kleimola, coeditor of Culture and Identity in Muscovy: 1359–1584
“As miraculous and prodigious as Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky’s photographic efforts were, William Craft Brumfield’s heroically resolute labor to record the Russian built environment of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is remarkable in its own way. For the past four decades, Brumfield has pursued buildings, cityscapes, and landscapes across the length of Russia, producing what has become the single most important record of the Russian built environment of our era. This period’s political tumult makes his work even more significant. Journeys through the Russian Empire is an important record of how Russia changed over a troubled century and will help readers appreciate what will come to be seen as lost worlds.” — Blair A. Ruble, coeditor of Rebounding Identities: The Politics of Identity in Russia and Ukraine
“Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky's eerie color photographs of the Tsarist empire, made in its waning years before war and revolution, record the serene glories of Russian architecture typically set in a softly glowing pre-industrial landscape. Beginning in the last decades of the Soviet Union, William Craft Brumfield has photographed these same widely dispersed monuments. The resulting juxtaposition of images, taken as much as a century apart, reminds the reader that buildings, like empires, have lives in time.” — John Beldon Scott, author of Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin
"This large-format book, 520 pages in length, contains some 400 stunning full-color images of ancient churches, towns, and landscapes taken by two great explorers, who have preserved so much of Russian culture through their photography." — Anna Sorokina, Russian beyond the Headlines
"This is a book to be approached slowly and with care. As you move through the eight regions of travel, there is much to be absorbed and to be savored including Brumfield’s narrative, which ends at the Solovetsky Transfiguration Monastery, an impressive array of buildings on the Solovetsky Archipelago in the White Sea. . . . This is rich journey worth taking for anyone with an interest in Russia and Russian culture, and it matters not at all whether you have been to Russia or not." — Richard Crepeau, New York Journal of Books
"At the asking price, this large-format book is a bargain, not just for 'content' but for the excellence of production values and design, enhanced by clearly drawn maps for each of the regions covered. Anyone interested in Russian or Central Asian history and culture would find pleasure in having this volume to savor." — Dan Waugh, Newsletter of the Early Slavic Studies Association
"The journeys wend through little-known towns like Belozersk and Rzhev, and the complexity of their churches and monasteries, full of tiny and intricate details, unfold like flowers before the eyes. Magnificent iconography, graceful 'onion' domes, wildly colorful exteriors, and blended architectural styles keep the eye roving, with descriptions that provide historical context and artistic merit. . . . As intriguing as the photos are, Brumfield’s text draws readers in with tales of vast wealth and power and religious devotion. Moreover, Brumfield invites readers to consider not only the circumstances under which the buildings were built, but what happened after Prokudin-Gorsky captured them." — Faith Dawson, Tulane Today