Glamorous “Golden Age” Hollywood, bohemian San Francisco and New Orleans—then the rough-and-ready Chicago of gangster clans; incomparable New York in all its splendor and poverty; exotic Indian reservations; quiet provincial towns… To Ilf and Petrov, everything that’s now familiar to us was new and unfamiliar—tomato juice and hamburgers, refrigerators and vibromassagers, car dealerships and advertising promotions, striptease in nightclubs, and of course the sensational liquor-industry novelty of the 1930s—beer in cans. Maybe that’s why their book makes readers laugh not only with amusement, but also with a nostalgic smile.