Svetlana Boym, an essayist, photographer, novelist and playwright "whose work illuminated the haunting, quicksilver counterpoint of myth, memory and identity," died on August 5, the New York Times reported. She was 56. She was best known to a general readership for her 2001 book The Future of Nostalgia. Her other works included Another Freedom: The Alternative History of an Idea; Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia; and Death in Quotation Marks: Cultural Myths of the Modern Poet.
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Barbara Somerfield, founder of Aurora Press, died August 11. She was 67.
After her dream of being a professional dancer ended because of a spinal injury, Somerfield joined the New York Astrology Center, which became a bookstore for metaphysical and alternative health books and a center for classes in these fields. With Henry Weingarten, she founded the National Astrological Society in 1970. They later founded ASI Publishing, which published the first acupuncture text in the U.S. as well as metaphysics and alternative health titles. In 1981, she founded Aurora Press.