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Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond | 
| Author: Rock Brynner
Publisher: Steerforth
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy Used: $0.87
You Save: $29.08 (97%)
New (3) Used (26) from $0.87
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 552819
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 348
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 1586421026
Dewey Decimal Number: 929.20973
EAN: 9781586421021
ASIN: 1586421026
Publication Date: April 4, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
For millions of his fans, there is only one Yul Brynner, the most mysterious and exotic star in Hollywood history. But in fact four men were given that same name in successive generations, beginning with Yul’s Swiss-born grandfather, Jules, and ending with his son born in New York, Yul Jr., better known as author and historian Rock Brynner. Their lives compose a global odyssey that has come full circle in present-day Vladivostok in Far East Russia, the city built by Jules in the 1880s, where Yul and his father, Boris Julievitch, were born, and which Rock first visited on a lecture tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
This is a vast family epic, teeming with exotic adventures, that begins aboard a pirate ship bound for Shanghai; like the fiction of Michener or Clavell, this true story is closely interwoven with history. Within twenty years of his arrival, Jules was the leading industrialist in the Far East, and the empire he created involved tiger hunters, Asian emperors, and most significantly, Tsar Nicholas II; it is revealed here exactly how their business association – and the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok – triggered the Russo—Japanese War that ended three centuries of Romanov autocracy. Under Lenin’s government, Boris was the only mine owner to regain control of his vast operation; but his personal dramas in China, Manchuria, and North Korea rivaled the ordeals of Dr. Zhivago. With the Russian diaspora, Yul’s childhood took him from Vladivostok to China and then to France, where, as a teenager, he performed in nightclubs with Russian Gypsies while becoming a trapeze acrobat in the circus. He moved to America before he spoke English and within five years was starring on Broadway; ten years later he received the Academy Award for The King and I. Yul’s only son, Rock, has been a European street clown and a Broadway star, road manager for The Band and bodyguard for Muhammad Ali, as well as a novelist and historian. His numerous visits to Vladivostok, along with his research, have earned him an enduring place in its social history.
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| Customer Reviews:
 yul brynner biography November 9, 2006
saskia (Minnesota)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Fantastic story of the Brynner family. The pictures themselves are quite an interesting aspect of the book. I gave this book to my mother-in-law for her birthday, as her favorite movie is "The King & I".
Amazing Family Saga October 12, 2006
Loves the View (Hawaii)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Rock Brynner proves himself to be a very capable historian and writer. To put this together was an amazing labor of love. Not only is the text riveting, the photographs are wonderful, and there are a lot of them.
The book's title clearly fits. The Bryners build an empire and travel widely. The book describes both across 4 generations.
This family was certainly where the action was over these generations: shipping, mining, and entertainment. (Now, Rock appears to be a free lance academic, similarly, a reflection of our times.) A fascinating timber deal may have been the precipitating element in a Russo-Japanese War, a war which sewed further disconent with the Tzar and spurred his downfall.
In this book we get glimpse of the founding of a Russian city, how a clever hardworking immigrant could make a fortune and how tenuous that fortune could be. We see how events in Moscow and St. Petersburg affected people across many time zones and countries.
The mobility of the early generations is interesting. They easily move from Hong Kong to Japan, to Russia, to China and back again. These foreigners found not only businesses, but cities in these places. The paperwork seems to be mininal to nonexistent. After the revolution, leaving was problematic (but solved). Later generations circumnavigate the globe, but citizenship is a mobility issue.
Due to her own personal heartache, Yul's mother moves and these moves keep Yul one step ahead of political upheaval. Living with his mother, he was exposed arts at home and in Paris. His uncle provided a stable father figure. Had the divorce not occurred, would his father's influence have prevailed and would he have been a businessman or have been purged along the way? Were it not for his eventual fame, this particular book, this amazing story, would never have been told.
Rock points out how art immitates life (or is it the other way?) through the irony of his sister singing Madame Butterfly which is a parallel story to her grandfather's. He shows the themes of "leaving behind" (otrecheniye) and returning to place through the generations. I love how he refers to Yul's status as a faux monarch, and how the real ones relate to him.
This is a wonderful book. In reading it you see the impact of history on people's lives. You learn more about Yul Brynner (didn't know he did so much directing, spoke so many languages, knew mobsters) and the interesting life of Rock.
True History that is more amazing the best fiction !! July 5, 2006
John Barbey (San Francisco, California USA)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Rock Brynner's biographical history of his amazing family has to be one of the most exciting non-fiction books this year. This is not a tale that could have been told in a magazine article (unless it had filled the entire magazine) ! Yet this reads as swiftly as a really compelling article in Vanity Fair magazine. It is like Dr. Zhivago, Around The World In Eighty Days, and Horatio Alger all rolled into one, starring Yul Brynner no less, with equally superb supporting roles played by his own father, grandfather, and heroic scapegrace son. Heroic in the last case, because the latest Brynner is a first-rate historian who gives the reader a beautiful historical sketch of the fascinating but little-known part of the world that has been called 'Russia's Wild East.'
The actual story of all the members of this family is as, or more astounding than anything Yul Brynner performed on the screen, which is saying quite a lot. When the story moves to Yul and Rock it is peppered with new cameos of many of the most intriguing people of our times. As for Yul himself, his Superstar status is not in the least bit diminished by all this elaborate detail - it only becomes more awesome. Hollywood usually glamorizes it's subjects but Yul was that amazing exception, the real thing ! One also discovers that it was not such a stretch for him to play an unusually admirable King, or Pharoah since he had a good assist from his own life and from his own DNA. His immediate forebears also all looked as if they had stepped off movie screens, were natural leaders, and lived very thrilling, demanding lives. It is a something of a miracle that they all survived the swirl of major historic events that they did live through.
The biographical and historic material by Rock is beautifully researched, well balanced, and described with bright wit and economy of phrase. Yul and the ancestors would be truly proud !
150 Years of Solitude... from Russia April 27, 2006
D. Price (Airmont, NY USA)
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
Empire and Odyssey, by Rock Brynner, is a most delightful read of non-fiction. To tell the most extraordinary story of his family, starting with his great-grandfather, Jules, Mr. Brynner has masterfully woven in the last 150 years of Russian history. His eye-opening observations are clearly the product of a facile and scholarly mind, but the reader is unaware of this richness thanks to the author's obvious talent for storytelling. The book hits the ground running with Jules sailing aboard a pirate vessel to find his way to Shanghai, where he lays the foundation for a trading company. By way of Japan, he is one of the founders of the city of Vladivostok, and there he deals with Tsar Nicholas II, who determines to build a railroad from St Petersburg, to this Wild East seaport town. The author uncovers the reasons for the resulting war with Japan, that ultimately precipitated the Bolshevik Revolution. His grandfather Boris struggles to outwit the Soviet beauracracy, for the Brynner Empire, and for his family's survival.
The Brynner patriarchs' remarkable love lives counterpoint the politics and industry, as they surround themselves with beautiful, strong, intelligent women, who fight for what they want, alongside their husbands, or without them.
By the time the story focuses on Mr. Brynner's famous father, Yul (after Jules), the reader is treated to anecdotes of Mikhail Chekhov, Jean Cocteau, Cecil B. DeMille, Rogers and Hammerstein, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra, and other titans of 20th century show business, providing unique and candid insight into the nature of celebrity.
The author finally turns the lens on himself, and the weight his family's legacy has had on his own life, which is no less remarkable. Bartending for the Rat Pack, chauffeuring Sam Giancana, bodyguarding Mahummed Ali, road managing The Band, and poignantly returning, on invitation as the Brynner scion, to Vladivostok, wearing his father's cowboy boots from The Magnificent Seven.
Empire and Odyssey proves that fact is more fantastic than fiction. Fast paced and entertaining, I recommend it to anyone. It left me wanting more. I hope Mr. Brynner will return to extract additional exquisite ore from this mother lode.
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