Nathan P. (dog-eared) reviewed on 2/23/2006 + 74 more book reviews

The Wall Street Journal staffer has gone on to tackle homeland security but this earlier book of his is more comedic journalism with an "innocent abroad" approach to post-Soviet collapse. It isn't journalism that seeks to understand another culture, but it has merits as first-hand humour. Also good lead to financial personalities such as Potanin who has kept his head and fortunes in Putin's regime. In retrospect, his best section tends to be on a woman his book jacket describes as a "gorgeous robber baroness" who flies him down to Ukraine on one of her four personal jets for a talk and shots of vodka. She tells how she got her business start by pirating action dramas like Rambo before becoming a gas baron. Julia Timoshenko went on, of course, to help lead Ukraine's Orange Revolution and Polish Playboy came around to Brzezinski's fawning assessment of her by naming the Ukrainian diva as the "sexiest politician."

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