A fast-moving and readable yet unsurprising tale of wealth and power in the new Russia.
The rise and fall of a single oligarch as a gaudy microcosm of post-communist Russia.
The prolific Mezrich (Seven Wonders, 2014, etc.), author of Bringing Down the House (2002) and The Accidental Billionaires (2009), takes a sprawling, episodic approach to portraying the brutally absurdist era spanning Boris Yeltsin’s and Vladimir Putin’s regimes, approximately 1994 through 2013. He focuses on Boris Berezovsky as the exemplar of a strange new oligarchic class. Once an obscure mathematician, he began his rise as a car dealer but soon obtained interests in oil, metals, and TV, purchasing a state-owned network that ultimately put him at odds with Putin. Introduced in the midst of an assassination attempt against him (typical of Mezrich’s focus on dramatic incident), Berezovsky seems a vulgar striver yet an oddly sympathetic protagonist, even though many around him came to bad ends. Following his brush with death, Berezovsky initially appeared unstoppable. He became a power within the struggle to keep the unhealthy Yeltsin in office, and he formed a lucrative partnership with Roman Abramovich, a youthful petroleum entrepreneur who initially seemed the ideal protégé. However, the oligarchs went astray in selecting the equally ambitious Putin to succeed Yeltsin: “Berezovsky firmly believed Putin to be [a] perfect cog; a strongman who could be controlled.” But Putin made his intentions clear from his presidency’s outset, “presenting himself as the man who would clean up the chaos and drive the Oligarchs out of politics.” Ultimately, Berezovsky’s resistance to Putin resulted in his exile. As in previous books, Mezrich has a glib, easily comprehensible style, producing an engrossing narrative that stays on the surface of things. The events leading to Berezovsky’s downfall become repetitive and blurry, while interesting side journeys, such as the disastrous 2000 sinking of the Kursk, are only briefly explored. The tale ends abruptly with Berezovsky’s apparent suicide, not really probed despite obvious unanswered questions.
A fast-moving and readable yet unsurprising tale of wealth and power in the new Russia.Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7189-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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