While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

One of the largest paddle steamers afloat in Britain is the H.M.S. Royal Eagle, former peacetime excursion boat which carried passengers on pleasure jaunts from Tower Bridge to Southend, Ramscate and Margate. Commissioned two years ago as a warship of the Royal Navy, the craft has been in action 52 times against enemy aircraft. The Eagle took part in the evacuation from Dunkirk where she was dive-bombed 48 times and brought home nearly 3,000 British troops. Members of the crew cleaning the paddle boxes of H.M.S. Royal Eagle in London on January 18, 1943. (Photo by AP Photo)

German troops in Stalingrad, USSR. September 10, 1942. (Photo by TASS)

Ammunition airlift into besieged Khe Sanh, Operation Pegasus, April 1968. (Photo by Larry Burrows/AP Photo)

Two Girls who managed to evade the police walk away as police on foot and horseback push back to te curd at Park Row, In New York on April 26, 1960, A milling throng of more than 1,000 High students who storned city hall in a Demonstration supporting teachers wage demands. (Photo by AP Photo)

New program of Munich's Krone Circus performed by two American artists “The Carmenas” during a press conference in Munich, Germany on January 10, 1962, while sitting in a coffee-house. (Photo by Heinrich Sanden Sr./AP Photo)

German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) enjoys a quiet picnic between meetings, circa 1933. Picture 196 of a series of collectable images published in Germany during the Nazi period, entitled “Deutschland Erwacht” (Germany Awakes). (Photo by Heinrich Hoffmann/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)