The New Tsar, The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin, By: Steven Lee Myers, Narrated by: Rene Ruiz. This is the story of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin from his childhood, to not too spectacular history of schooling, and even less spectacular employment at the Committee of State Security (KGB), and then the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). Next, we learn of his early family life (quite unresponsive to his wife, as he is a chauvinist), his need to seem manly, his mediocre intelligence, his dogged determination as a bureaucrat, and how happenstances (not shrewdness) brought him next to and then into the center of Russian Federation power. This is a story of how this unremarkable man just happens to be in the right place at the right time. Because of Boris Yeltsin thinking Putin would be a mild laxative for Russian politics to bear (notice the play on words); he, Yeltsin, made Putin his successor. What could go wrong? This fool Putin was but a non-descript functionary. Yeltsin never meant to have Putin become dictator of Russia – but he did, albeit inadvertently.

Then, as the book explains, as Putin becomes familiar with his office and its powers, Putin enters a phase of narcissistic metamorphosis from being a functionary to a megalomaniacal ruler. Once Putin acquires power he allows his inner hates to deploy. We see the evil core of Vladimir Putin, manifest itself once he holds power. As his time in office increases, he also develops shrewedness. There is an old pirate saying; “shiver me timbers.” As we learn more and more about Putin, he does make one’s timbers shake. As you listen, you sit there in horror and say to yourself no one man could be that corrupt and hold no compassion for other humanity.

The biography has a unique twist; the author never “proves” that it was Putin that did the awful deeds reported to have occurred during Putin’s early reign. You just reach that supposition on your own. One comes to guess or realize; these catastrophes told of in the book, happened too many times, in close association with opportunities that Putin controlled, that resulted in a benefit to Putin – to chalk up to serendipity.

Does this book give you a moral star to follow; no. This book does not seem to teach us how to avoid dictators or how to respond to authoritarians. This is just an historical listing of events and the man who is taken up by the current of time and becomes a world force. It does a magnificent job of listing the history in factual detail. For example, the chapter on how, once holding absolute power, Putin makes Russia into the functioning power of “Russia, Inc.” Meaning, the state was the “actual” owner of mass properties seemingly given out to Putin’s friends; the nation’s oligarchs.

Stylize this book is just a retelling of historical fact after historical fact. Just a newspaper account of the facts. The story of the man himself though what does he think, is a perplexity not confronted by the book. The novel fails us because it does not tell us why Putin’s mind ticks in this demonic manner; just that it is a serpentine mind, and has no compunction against unleashing demonic acts for him, Putin’s only goal – the dominance of Russia over all else – at least if he is in control.

If you have an intertest in following world politics – international policies; this book is an important cog in the wheel of understanding of what we face. Mother Russia has produced Rosemarie’s Baby.

If you are going to read this work, keep in mind, John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron of Acton; “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”