When this book's photos were being shot on June 8th, 1986, I was a boy in Soviet Union. The word "perestroika" was not yet invented, and the "iron curtain" was alive and well. Quite naturally, foreign countries seemed more like other planets to us then. Now I live in Canada, and what I find the most revelational about this book is that from today's viewpoint, Canada of 1986 was surprisingly more like the Soviet Union of the same time than it is like modern Canada or modern Russia. Cars, fashions, appliances, even people's smiles and expressions, let alone the book's design and print quality are all unmistakably the "deep into 1980s" style, and many things in the book look like they're from my own childhood. When you live through changes you tend to miss them, and it takes a book like this to remind you of how even the smallest things in life may change within a decade. These changes constitute the real history of our world, not the sequences of prime ministers or general secretaries. I'd highly recommend this book for its historical interest alone - and besides, it has some really great pictures, too.