John Scott

author

John Scott

Best known for Behind the Urals, this American writer turned years of firsthand experience in the Soviet Union into vivid reporting and memoir. His work brings a turbulent period of history down to the level of ordinary labor, daily life, and political change.

2 Audiobooks

The puzzle king : Amusing arithmetic, book-keeping blunders, commercial comicalities, curious "catches", peculiar problems, perplexing paradoxes, quaint questions, queer quibbles, school stories, interesting items, tricks with figures, cards, draughts, dice, dominoes, etc., etc., etc.

The puzzle king : Amusing arithmetic, book-keeping blunders, commercial comicalities, curious "catches", peculiar problems, perplexing paradoxes, quaint questions, queer quibbles, school stories, interesting items, tricks with figures, cards, draughts, dice, dominoes, etc., etc., etc.

by John Scott

Genius rewarded : The story of the sewing machine

Genius rewarded : The story of the sewing machine

by John Scott

About the author

Born in 1912, he was an American writer, journalist, and editor whose life took an unusual turn when he spent much of the 1930s in the Soviet Union. That experience shaped his writing and gave him rare firsthand insight into Soviet industrial life.

His best-known book, Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel, grew out of those years and became his signature work. Rather than writing from a distance, he drew on direct experience as a worker and observer, which gives his account an immediacy that still stands out.

Later in his career, he worked in journalism and publishing, including as an editor with Time-Life. He died in 1976, but his writing remains notable for its close-up view of a dramatic moment in 20th-century history.