Books on the WWII siege of Leningrad are not infrequent, but accounts of how the Russian capital weathered the war are. The gap is about to be filled by Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War, whose author, Rodric Braithwaite, served as the British ambassador to Russia during the years, at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the '90s, when the Soviet Union was crumbling. Carol Janeway at Knopf was the winner over four other publishers when agent George Lucas at Carlisle & Company put the book up for auction on behalf of Profile Books, its London publisher. Peter Carson, a noted Russophile among London editors, was its buyer there. Publication is planned for 2006.