"Leo Tolstoy claimed that all happy families resemble one another; many in the West believe that all Russians are equally miserable. Maria (Gruzdeva) Shelyakhovskaya's book, Being Grounded in Love: A History of One Russian Family, 1872-1981, challenges both such simplistic notions. Being Grounded in Love is a tale of a couple coping intelligently with major events which shaped the Russia of today, including the Stalinist purges, the bloody fight between the Red Army and the Nazi military, and the postwarstruggle to realize the "Soviet Dream." Gruzdev family members penned hundreds of letters and diary entries which Maria used to form a story that reads like a novel in letters. Replete with references to Russia's best poetry and prose, her book shows the toll of wartime separations and other trials, and reveals values that Russians continue to hold dear"--