Most common patterns for writing an urban history unfold either along a chronological axis or combine various thematic perspectives such as institutional, national, social, cultural, and economic aspects. Evrydiki Sifneos introduces a novel mode of writing which she defines as “peripatetic”—emulating the experience of a walk in the city as the central organizing principle for the composition of her research into the history of imperial Odessa.

Odessa and its communities were objects of several comprehensive historical research projects that put emphasis, alternately, on Odessa's economy, its Jewish community, its civil associations, Odessan myth, journalism, and literature. Between the economy, community, and culture Sifneos introduces an urban space in its various social contexts as a vantage point of her investigation into the history of the city. This approach presupposes the position of a historian as a flâneur, strolling both horizontally in space and vertically in time, when the narrative combines both—the tangibility of the material presence of the city and the subjectivity of the historian as a focalizer and a guide of this journey. Indeed, the personal voice and sensitivities of Sifneos—as a woman, an economic historian, and a descendant of the Greek merchant family that traded in the nineteenth century on the shores of the Azov sea not far away from Odessa is ubiquitously present in her book. She reads the streets and sites of Odessa as if they were a palimpsest, recovering different layers and paying attention to a dialog between them.

The majority of the chapters of the book move seamlessly between the geography and socio-economic history of the city. The first chapter concentrates on the port and the adjoining sites to tell a story of Odessa's beginnings, its demography, and its ethnic pluralism. The second chapter delves into the reality of markets and business culture to narrate a story of Odessa politics and, more specifically, the history of the Greek secret Society of Friends (Philiki Etaireia) that was founded by Greek merchants of the city and was among the motivating forces behind the Greek struggle for independence. The third chapter concentrates on the industrial outskirts of Odessa to tell a story of its entrepreneurship and employment culture. The fourth chapter concentrates on Odessa's public spaces and tells the story of the city's civil associations and various social stratifications. The fifth and six chapters depart from the principle of the geographical anchoring of the narrative and tell the story of ethnic tensions in the city and the demise of its imperial glory, respectively.

It is there that some of the theoretical blind spots that in previous chapters were concealed by the tangibility of the encounter with concrete spaces and social situations become apparent. Central among them is Sifneos’s perception of cosmopolitanism and nationalism as opposite, mutually exclusive categories, without considering the possibility of their congruency and sometimes even overlap. Thus, she reads the history of the Philiki Etaireia in the context of liberalization among Russian elites after the Napoleonic Wars, and refers to it as a phenomenon parallel to the secret societies among Russian military elite that brought about the Decembrist Uprising in 1825, reading Greek insurgency as a liberal rather than a national project. But if she was aligning the Greek national movement with the emergence of Jewish proto-Zionist nationalism that took place in Odessa in the 1880s (which she ignores completely in her book), she would have seen the suggestive pattern of the emergence of the national out of the cosmopolitan culture of merchants.

Sifneos tends to ignore the ethnic and religious preconceptions as a factor in ethnic encounters in the city and explains “receptivity” to the “disruptive features of nationalism” partly as the result of “failed assimilation” (29), partly as a result of laws that “promulgated fragmentation and segregation” in the society (56), and partly as an outcome of economic rivalry. The representative litmus test of her approach is her treatment of the history and causes of Anti-Jewish violence in Odessa. She concentrates only on the later instances of pogroms in 1871, 1881, and 1905. The events of 1881 and 1905 she explains persuasively against the backdrop of all-imperial waves of anti-Jewish violence, and unravels the Odessa-specific 1871 pogrom as an outcome of the economic tensions between Greek and Jewish merchants in the conditions of the changing and ailing grain trade economy. She mentions offhandedly, however, the earlier 1821 and 1859 pogroms that were incited by Greek merchants and sailors, and that took place before the failure of liberal reforms and assimilation, and before the deterioration in the city's trade. But Sifneos virtually ignores pre-existing myths and beliefs as a factor for both—ethnic consolidation and hostility to other groups. Thus, in one of the less fortunate assertions of her book, aside from the description of economic tensions and rivalries, Sifneos explains that the outbreak of the 1871 pogrom was the result of Jewish misunderstanding. Apparently Jews were frightened by the Greek tradition to shoot into the air after the Resurrection service during Easter and were thus “provoked” into “violent reaction” (118) that initiated the pogrom.

Besides these few shortcomings and blind spots, Sifneos's book presents an invaluable contribution to Odessa studies. Although her methodology of combining humanistic geography and history has its precedents in the field of urban history, her book will be a useful read for urban historians working in other contexts as well.