New book announcement--THE BLACK RUSSIAN by Vladimir Alexandrov

[Vladimir Alexandrov]

THE BLACK RUSSIAN
by Vladimir Alexandrov
Atlantic Monthly Press (an imprint of Grove/Atlantic), March 2013

This the biography of Frederick Bruce Thomas (1872-1928), the remarkable son of former slaves in Mississippi who became a millionaire impresario in pre-Revolutionary Russia and was the first to import jazz to Turkey.  Although famous during his lifetime, Thomas is now almost entirely forgotten.  THE BLACK RUSSIAN is based on extensive archival research in the United States, Russia, and other countries.  

Clusters of chapters trace Thomas's life in the United States and travels through Western Europe, his spectacular career as a preeminent owner of popular entertainment venues in Moscow during the period 1911-1917, and his reinvention of himself as the "Sultan of Jazz" in Constantinople in the 1920s.

For more information about the book, please visit Amazon.com and www.valexandrov.com

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