This is a swift account of Putin's rise to power and his subsequent efforts to destabilize the world, thus increasing his/Russia's influence. It isn't an artful survey, but rather a factual one with periodic tangents about the history of Russia or the popular uprisings of the last 25 years (Otpor!, ...more

An illustrated polemic, “Accidental Czar” takes pictorial potshots at the egregious President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. While the heavy lifting on Putin’s adventures and misadventures (mostly the latter) is done by Andrew S. Weiss, former director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs on the ...more

(Note: I received an advanced reader copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley)

Along with the expected details of Putin’s rise from low-level KGB employee to the linchpin of modern Russia, “Accidental Czar” also had a great deal of other information as well. Since Putin and the state have become so de ...more

Hotheaded guy from family of modest means decides he wants to be a spy. He achieves that dream but he doesn't have any connections, plus he does hotheaded things like beating up a stranger, so he serves in a relatively unimportant post doing work that doesn't matter. He witnesses the fall of East Ge ...more

Andrew Weiss has written an amazing biography of Vladimir Putin. Starting from his childhood, to collapse of the Soviet Union and finally to the beginning of 2022. Throughout the story not only do we get a better grasp of Putin but also of Russian history and how it affected Putin. Weiss has distill ...more