In 1932 Zara Witkin, a prominent American engineer, set off for the Soviet Union with two goals: to help build a society more just and rational than the bankrupt capitalist system at home, and to seek out the beautiful film star Emma Tsesarskaia. His memoirs offer a detailed view of Stalin's bureaucracy--entrenched planners who snubbed new mods? construction bosses whose cover-ups led to terrible disasters; engineers who plagiarized Witkin's wk&work;...