Returning from America with books for the library

It is the beginning of September, and I have returned to the library after my month-long trip to America. It was wonderful being in America—seeing my friends and family, stocking up on those American “necessities” that I can’t seem to get here in Ukraine, buying presents for my Crimean family and friends. But I missed Crimea and was glad to get back to my life here, and now I am especially glad to be at the library and learn of all the happenings while I was gone.
Photograph of Kemal Karpat on the front cover of his autobiography.

On behalf of the library, I had sent a request to Turkish historian Kemal Karpat to donate copies of his books to the Gasprinsky Library. It has gotten very expensive to ship books from America to Ukraine, as there is no longer any surface mail between the countries. Professor Karpat graciously agreed to donate books, but he did not want to send them to Ukraine (he lives in America now), so I arranged to receive the books while I was in America with the plan of bringing them back with me. But, of course, my suitcase got filled up with many other things, and there was no room for his books. My cousin in Chicago generously offered to pay to have them shipped, so a few days after I arrived back in Crimea, a box of Kemal Karpat’s books also arrived.
Some of the books by Kemal Karpat in Turkish language that he donated to the library.

Kemal Karpat is Crimean Tatar and a Turkish historian and former professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has written many books in English and Turkish. Here is an example of some of his titles from a list in Wikipedia:

The Politicization of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2001)

•The Ottoman Past and Today's Turkey (Brill, 2000)
•Political and Social Thought in the Contemporary Middle East (Praeger, 1968)
•Turkey's Politics: The Transition to a Multi-Parti System (Princeton University Press, 1959)
•Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton University Press, 1964)
• An Inquiry into the Social Foundations of Nationalism in the Ottoman State (Princeton UP, 1973)
•Social Change and Politics in Turkey (Brill Leiden, 1973)
•Turkey's Foreign Policy in Transition (Leiden, 1975)

He sent two boxes of books, but I was only able to ship one box at this time, so I chose his Turkish language books and his most recent book in English, The Politicization of Islam.
The library did not have copies of any of his books in their collection, so they were very happy to receive the books. And I look forward to having a chance to read read his English book.