Based on who you ask, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, is either the Ultimate Badass who Single-Handedly Saved Russia or a crony-capitalist autocrat who is the 'Russian Mussolini'. So who is this Putin guy anyway?

Gessen offers a round condemnation of Putin, stopping only from calling him an evil little tyrant (Although one of her interviewees does). She starts the biography with his early childhood (a schoolyard bully turned fervent club member) and early years in the KGB. He was a devoted, but relatively ineffective spy whose best achievement was purchasing an American technical manual for 800 Marks and recruiting one engineering student.

The fall of the Soviet Union (which Gessen describes with admirable and frustrating detail) was a crushing time for Putin. He devoted his life to the state, and yet he had nothing to show for it. Even his East German neighbors were richer than he was.

When the coup effort came around in 1991, Putin was on the fence to resign or not, depending on how the coup went. He stayed, and remained a Colonel.

With the utter chaos of the democratization effort, Yeltsin had tried, and then rejected a variety of successors, and wound up alienating nearly all but a handful of supporters from him. His approval rating was 2%, and he was desperate. He had to have a successor before he keeled over.

A certain Colonel Putin was suggested by one of his trusted aides, because he appeared pliant, eager, and dependable. Such is the nature of his charm - he is a diplomatic chameleon. Once in power, he systematically began to dismantle the fragile democratic apparatus. Federal leaders could only be installed by appointment. The oligarchs who opposed him were jailed and replaced. The press was muzzled. Putin, in his rarer interviews and press statements, was crude, blunt, and sometimes threatening. But for a while, this was his appeal. A strong leader in economic crisis.

Yet it must be said that the book has some glaring flaws. For some incidents (Ryazan bombings) it appears too much of a stretch to tie the staged efforts to Putin.

But it is not impossible. The assassination of dissidents seems more likely (Politkovskaya and Litvinenko most prominent).

And for all this grim recounting, and possible strength of Putin's semi-autocracy (he is up for another six-year term after this one is finished, thanks to shuffling positions with Medvedev), there is a growing discontent in Russia, fueled by social media. His iron fist has not choked the life out of Russia yet.