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The first comprehensive, fully up-to-date biography of Vladimir Putin, woven into the tumultuous saga of Russia over the last sixty years.
Vladimir Putin is the world's most dangerous man. Alone among world leaders, he has the power to reduce the United States and Europe to ashes in a nuclear firestorm and has threatened to do so. He invades his neighbors, most recently Ukraine, meddles in western elections, and orders assassinations inside and outside Russia. His regime is autocratic and deeply corrupt. But that is only half the story.
Unflinching, hard-hitting, and objective, Philip Short's biography gives us the whole tale, up to the present day. To the fullest extent anyone has yet been able, Short cracks open the strongman's thick carapace to reveal the man underneath those bare-chested horseback rides. In this deeply researched account, readers meet the Putin who slept in the same room as his parents until he was twenty-five years old, who backed out of his wedding right beforehand, and who learned English in order to be able to talk to George W. Bush.
Vladimir Putin is wreaking havoc in Europe, threatening global peace and stability and exposing his fellow citizens to devastating economic countermeasures. Yet puzzlingly many Russians continue to support him. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the many facets of the man behind the mask that Putin wears on the world stage.
Drawing on almost two hundred interviews conducted over eight years in Russia, the United States, and Europe and on source material in more than a dozen languages, Putin will be the last word for years to come.
"[An] incisive and well-timed biography...Short's elegant prose conveys a trenchant view of post-Communist society—'a world in which all the barriers were fluid, where yesterday's criminal was tomorrow's business magnate and a politician today was a criminal tomorrow'—that makes Putin a striking embodiment of Russia's troubled soul. This is a must-read." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The author of authoritative books on Mao and Pol Pot returns with another impressive yet disturbing account of a dangerous world leader...Short delivers a consistently compelling account of Putin's life so far...Required reading for anyone interested in global affairs." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Anyone wanting to learn more about Putin's personality, ideas, power and the threat he has come to pose to world peace should read this outstanding biography." - Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler
This information about Putin was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Philip Short has written several definitive biographies including Mao: A Life and Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare. He earlier had a long career as a foreign correspondent in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington, D.C., for the BBC, the Economist, and the Times of London.
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