N. Ya. Mandelstam’s book “About Akhmatova” is a close friend’s reflections on the poet’s creative and life path, full of love and overshadowed by the bitterness of loss. This is the first scientific publication prepared from the only typescript that has reached us. An addition and a unique context to the book is a large epistolary block - correspondence between N. Ya. Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova, E. K. Livshits, N. I. Khardzhiev and N. E. Shtempel.