Masha Gessen

Excellent audiobook of 4.5 to 5 stars. Masha Gessen is a journalist who participated in anti-Putin demonstrations, at great risk. She portrays Putin as a childhood thug, now a filthy rich autocrat who suffers from kleptomania and pleonexia (extreme greed for wealth or material possessions; avarice). He’s now worth several billion dollars with palatial homes. To take over a company, all he has to do is put the owner in prison. He doesn’t skim off the top, he takes it all.

There is no law in Russia – only Putin – as he rolls back all democratic laws passed in the 90s, in full support of his puppet legislature, the Duma.

Putin's former campaign manager said: "The Russian regime has no ideology, no party, no politics. It is nothing but the power of a single man." ... With Putin's "continuing attempt to turn the country into a super-sized model of the KGB, there can be no room for dissidents or even for independent actors..." because they "are inconvenient, in part, because they refuse to accept the rules of the Mafia."

Two drawbacks of the book:

1 – The author narrates the book which is fine, except that some of the Russian names were mumbled and rushed and hard to understand, even at 95% speed. So a printed book may be easier for the names.

2 – The book was published in 2010 with an audio update in 2012, and more comments in 2014 as Putin invaded Crimea. But so much has happened since then.

I also read Gessen’s The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (published 2017), and Never Remember: Searching for Stalin's Gulags in Putin's Russia (published 2018), both 5-star books. Perhaps I should have read them in order.

This book covered a new topic for me -- Putin’s childhood.

Highly recommended!… (more)

Fantastic, fast paced reporting on the Boston marathon bombing and everyone involved. It reads as a thriller. It began with historical context of growing up in different independent republics of Russia, destroyed by civil wars, xenophobia, and religious persecution. What is like to grow up with parents that come from that in America.

All is fair in immigration. Except one thing: You never talk about the pain of dislocation. You do no describe the way color drains out of everyday life when nothing is familiar, how the texture of living seems to dissapear.

Then it gives little biographies of the brothers, friends, acquantainces, and family members. Theory on terrorism and living in America as an immigrant, with muslim roots, in the middle of the War on Terror.

Common sense and human experience show that only a small minority of people who subscribe to radical ideas - even the kinds of radical ideas that justify and promote violence - actually engage in violence. Research also shows that some terrorist do not hold strong political or ideological beliefs.

And finally (and the most riveting part of the book) after talking about the little brother's friends hiding evidence, and a old friend of the older brother (that allegedly helped him kill three people), it goes into the FBI ways of taking action, conspiracy theories, and thinly veiled conclusions (because the FBI won't disclose anything, surprise surprise). Everything goes off the rails. And this author does a fantastic job explaining what she can by looking at the inconsistencies of the story.

...,the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals. In these cases, the informants and agents often seemed to choose _targets based on their religious or political beliefs. They often chose _targets who were particularly vulnerable - whether because of mental disability, or because they were indigent and needed money that the government offered them. From former FBI agent, Michael German.… (more)