Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia Volume III: 3 Hardcover – Illustrated, 8 Oct. 2008

got all three books on this series. lovely collection if you are interested in subject matter . got interested in this area after watching the film eastern promise .

Ended up buying the whole collection. Very good books on a very special subject.

arrived quickly, a nice present

Great reference book

Very intrestinng!

This is not an encyclopedia in the usual sense of a book with entries arranged in alphabetical order. There are a large number of black and white photographs and neat pen drawings of tattoos, accompanied by descriptions and context which are detailed enough to make this book useful to serious students of Soviet/Russian society and the Gulag prison camp system. Readers of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Irina Ratushinskaya will find material to interest them here. Men's and Women's tattoos are depicted, with motifs ranging from the sentimental through the profanely offensive to the blackly humourous.This is a nicely produced book with cloth covered hardback binding, embossed on front and back covers. As recently as 25 years ago, it's contents would have had limited relevance outside of the Soviet Union. But given the increasing globalisation of crime today, police officers might this book useful, if only to get an idea of what they might be dealing with on a bad day at the office.

The best known bookseries about russian criminal tattoos. Theres some internal discrepancies about the meaning of some tattoos, and the contents are just piled together but still interesting.