This was one of my favorite books as a kid. I recently remembered it for some random reason and thought it was interesting that it had gone out of print. Somehow that made me want to reread it. It's actually still quite good. It's a boarding school story and I always loved those. The history is woven in rather than going off in lecture tangents, which is a mixed blessing -- you don't get dragged out of the story but you don't learn all that much of substance. It was really interesting to notice how they'd just finished fighting Napoleon (several of the students had lost their fathers in battle and Waterloo occurs partway through the book) but everyone still spoke French instead of Russian and hired French tailors and teachers. It was more realistic than some modern stories in that you basically just get their day to day routines, with no adventures and with plenty of petty squabbling. I don't think you could sell that now. The abrupt, left field ending could have used more explanation. Time to ILL the sequel, which I also read repeatedly. ( )