**A New Yorker Best Book of the YearA Foreign Affairs Best Book of the YearAn Atlantic Best Book of the YearA Financial Times Best Politics Book of the YearHow a new breed of dictators holds power by manipulating information and faking democracy**Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a m...

Corruption, fake news, and the "informational autocracy" sustaining Putin in powerAfter fading into the background for many years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia suddenly has emerged as a new threat-at least in the minds of many Westerners. But Western assumptions about Russia, and in particular about political decision-making in Russia, tend to be out of date or just plain wrong.Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin since 2000, Russia i...

A refreshing and deeply reported look at the political, economic, and cultural changes in Russia, with an in-depth examination of Vladimir Putin’s rise, the power of the oligarchy, and what it means for the world.Almost twenty-five years after Mikhail Gorbachev began radically reshaping his country, Russia has changed beyond recognition. In his third book on this subject, Professor Daniel Treisman takes stock of the country that has emerged from th...

Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world. In place of overt, mass repression, rulers such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Viktor Orbán control their citizens by distorting information and simulating democratic procedures. Like spin doctors in democracies, they spin the news to engineer support. Uncoveri...

**WINNER OF THE 2026 PULITZER PRIZE FOR OPINION WRITINGThe National Book Award winner's biography of a ruthless man's ascent to near-absolute power.**“In a country where journalists critical of the government have a way of meeting untimely deaths, Gessen has shown remarkable courage in researching and writing this unflinching indictment of the most powerful man in Russia.” —The Wall Street Journal“Thanks to fearless reporting and ac...

The stunning story of Russia's slide back into a dictatorship-and how the West is now paying the price for allowing it to happen.The ascension of Vladimir Putin-a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB-to the presidency of Russia in 1999 was a strong signal that the country was headed away from democracy. Yet in the intervening years-as America and the world's other leading powers have continued to appease him-Putin has grown not only into a dictator but an internati...

As the world struggles to confront a bolder Russia, the importance of understanding the formidable and ambitious Vladimir Putin has never been greater. This gripping narrative of Putin's rise to power recounts Putin's origins—from his childhood of abject poverty in Leningrad to his ascent through the ranks of the KGB, and his eventual consolidation of rule in the Kremlin.On the one hand, Putin's many domestic reforms—from tax cuts to an expansion of property rights...

The New York Times bestselling author of The Gates of Europe offers “a stirring account of an extraordinary moment” in Russian history (Wall Street Journal)On Christmas Day, 1991, President George H. W. Bush addressed the nation to declare an American victory in the Cold War: earlier that day Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as the first and last Soviet president. The enshrining of that narrative, one in which the end of the Cold War was li...

In this saga of brilliant triumphs and magnificent failures, David E. Hoffman, the former Moscow bureau chief for the Washington Post, sheds light on the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs. Focusing on six of these ruthless men- Alexander Smolensky, Yuri Luzhkov, Anatoly Chubais, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezovsky, and Vladimir Gusinsky-Hoffman shows how a rapacious, unruly capitalism was born out of the ashes of Soviet communism.

'An excellent and important work' Literary Review'Anyone concerned about how the bear will respond will find this historically informative account an accessible and stimulating guide' Sunday Express'Putin and the Rise of Russia is a privileged insider's account of the Russian enigma at first hand. It's the best kind of political journalism' ObserverWhen the Soviet...

Revised and updated with a new preface on the Crimean crisis______________________________________'An impressive polemic arguing that the West still underestimates the danger that Putin's Russia poses ... A useful appeal for vigilance' - Sunday Times'Highly informed, crisply written and alarming ... Wise up and stick together is the concluding message in Lucas's outstanding book' - Micha...

Fiona Hill and other U.S. public servants have been recognized as Guardians of the Year in TIME's 2019 Person of the Year issue.From the KGB to the Kremlin: a multidimensional portrait of the man at war with the West.Where do Vladimir Putin's ideas come from? How does he look at the outside world? What does he want, and how far is he willing to go?The great lesson of the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was the danger of misreading the statements, actio...