“The Secondary Essence of Things” is a collection of graceful, elegant, witty essays written by Elena and Mikhail Kholmogorov together and separately. Here are paradoxical reflections of a moral nature that make up the section “Offering to Erasmus,” meditations on the whimsical history of our fatherland in the cycle “Oh, Rus!..”. Notes from summer life in a village in the Tver region are included in the section “O rus!..”. Everyday trifles fill the ironic miniatures of the rubric “Being Determines Consciousness.” The personal recollections of each of the authors are gathered in “Memoirs.” The glaring absurdities in the use of the Russian language are aptly called “Out of the Corner of One’s Eye.”