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from amazon.com

The epic tale of the rise to power of Russia's current president—the only complete biography in English – that fully captures his emergence from shrouded obscurity and deprivation to become one of the most consequential and complicated leaders in modern history, by the former New York Times Moscow bureau chief.

In a gripping narrative of Putin’s rise to power as Russia’s president, Steven Lee Myers recounts Putin’s origins—from his childhood of abject poverty in Leningrad, to his ascension through the ranks of the KGB, and his eventual consolidation of rule. Along the way, world events familiar to readers, such as September 11th and Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008, as well as the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the ongoing conflict in Ukr...

Steven Lee Myers has worked at The New York Times since 1989. He has focused most of his career on international affairs, covering the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House during three presidential administrations. He has covered conflicts in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Iraq. He was a reporter embedded with the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and returned to Baghdad as a correspondent and bureau chief during the winding down of the American war from 2009 to 2011. He first traveled to Russia in 1998 and, beginning in 2002, has spent more than seven years based in Moscow. He has witnessed and written about many of the most significant events th...