This book is about overseas travel, real or fictitious, over two centuries. The traveler seeks the Other; the writer talks about himself. The double focus gives rise to semantic games revealed in parallel readings. The focus of this book moves from utopias to geopolitics, from nostalgia to espionage, from authorship to incest. Alexander Etkind's readings change the perception of the most famous texts of the Western tradition, from Democracy in America to Pale Fire, and the most famous heroes of Russian history, from the Decembrists to Trotsky. The chapters of the book tell what Pushkin read from Tocqueville; how sexual experimentation in America inspired Russian radicals; why the American ambassador entered Bulgakov's novel; how the philosopher from Leningrad influenced the financial leader of America; how unpredictably the stories of Nabokov and Pasternak intertwined. Analyzing his own method, A. Etkind characterizes it as “new historicism”: a combination of intellectual history, political theory and intertextual analysis in journeys through texts, genres and eras.