Mir Publications is a name known to most Indians associated with excellent books in almost all subjects of interest, but especially in science and mathematics. Many people who I know, confess that the science and mathematics that they have understood, they owe to Mir Publications. I couldn’t agree more. The fascination that these books left me with in my childhood has is unforgettable. Also associated publishers were Foreign Languages Publishing House, Raduga Publishers and Progress Publishers. When I say Mir later, what is meant is the books published by ensemble of these publishers from the Soviet era.
The first book that I remember reading is one from Progress was when I was in 4th Grade, the Title of the Book was All About Telescope and since then I am like Alice in Wonderland. Russian books, rather books English published in the Soviet Russia, have had an unforgettable impression on my life. The joy that these books have provided to me over the years is immeasurable. Not only these books were cheap, they were also published in many Indian languages: Hindi, Marathi and Bengali and Tamil I know for sure. This provided an ideal platform and inspiration for many, who came to science. An entire generation of Indians came of age with the titles from Mir Publications. But with end of the Soviet era, the Mir saga came to an end. The Mir titles which at times were cheaply and easily available became scant. And finally ceased to be a part of the mainstream bookshops. Only places one could find them was in the used book shops, and that too became scarce as the years went by. This trend continues till date. To find a Mir title today even in a used book shop is nothing less than a MIRacle!!
I have collected many books from these publishers and they form most precious part of my collection.
Some of the classics of the Mir books are by Yakov Pereleman, Landau, Kitaigorodosky, Zeldovich, Matveev and the list goes on…
Some notable series were: Science for Every One, What is…, ABC of…, Physics for Everyone, Little Mathematics Library…
Many of the titles will be lost forever never to delight a new generation of readers. The knowledge that at least these books existed should not be lost. This blog is an project to make an comprehensive list of the titles published by Mir and over the years. So that the knowledge about these titles goes to the larger community, so that in the future someone can take up their digitization and / or republication. I urge and request all the people who owe even a little bit to books by Mir to contribute their knowledge about these books here…
How you can contribute?
You can contribute to this project in many ways:
- Add the books which are not in the list.
- Add information whether e – copies of the books are available.
- Add the list of the books which were republished, and status of their availability.
- Locate hard copies of the books, in library or personal collections.
- Add information about the book like different editions and reprints, language translations, reviews, personal experiences.
I hope that this small endeavor will be worth the effort and these gem of books will delight generations of readers to come…
Mir Books 