For Christmas, I want to get Prof. x a copy of a science book he refers to a lot. The book is in German (actually a translation from Russian), which is x's native language, and AFAIK it's never been translated into English. I can apparently get it through amazon.de (or its affiliated dealers), which is the German branch of amazon.com; the problem is the website is in German, which I don't read, and has no translation. I tried to order a CD once from there but ran up against a ton of boilerplate and gave up; I checked amazon.com but they don't seem to have it. Can amazon.com help, or should I just ask Mrs. x (also a German-o-phone) to help me navigate?

I would get in touch with amazon.com and see if they can help you out. I would think that they could. And check other places...have you checked some other book stores? If that doesn't pan out then definitely get Mrs. x to help out. Seems that would be the easiest thing to do.

Good luck!

Hi froufrou: I've checked the RLIN catalog (university library holdings); there is not. a. copy. of that book to be found in any university library in the US and just one in Europe (from what I know it has to do with the work of a Soviet cosmologist, his name is Alexander L. Chizhevskii if you want to Google him: correct me if I'm wrong but I think Western science tends to dismiss a lot of Soviet science as fringe-y, politically biased @ best and woo @ worst, and suspect no library or bookshop on this side of the former iron curtain is gonna have this book or even give it the time of day).

I'll see if amazon.com has a customer-service place where I can write and find out; otherwise I'll just work with Mrs. x. Thanks