Steven Lee Myers has worked at the New York Times for 22 years, five of them in Russia during the period when Putin consolidated his power. He spent two years as bureau chief in Baghdad, covering the winding down of the American war in Iraq, and now covers the State Department. He lives in Washington, DC. This is his first book.
'Myers casts valuable light on the nexus of financial dealings
involving Putin's St Petersburg cronies'
*Observer*
'Myers has the accuracy and readable style of the best New
York Times journalists'
*Literary Review*
'Steven Lee Myers’s The New Tsar is not the first
biography of Putin, but it is the strongest to date. Judicious and
comprehensive, it pulls back the veil… from one of the world’s most
secretive leaders. What is most striking, given the aura of steely
consistency that Putin cultivates, is how he has changed over the
years… The great strength of Myers’s book is the way it shows
how chance events and Putin’s own degeneration gradually cleared
the path to the Ukraine crisis… Putin emerges as ... a flawed
individual who made his own choices at crucial moments and thereby
shaped history.'
*Washington Post*
'What Steven Lee Myers gets so right in The New Tsar, his
comprehensive new biography - the most informative and
extensive so far in English - is that at bottom Putin simply
feels that he’s the last one standing between order and chaos… What
Myers offers is the portrait of a man swinging from crisis to
crisis with one goal: projecting strength… A knowledgeable and
thorough biography… Putin himself now represents the chaos he so
abhors - the chaos that will surely come in his wake.'
*New York Times Book Review*
'Personalities determine history as much as geography, and there is
no personality who has had such a pivotal effect on 21st century
Europe as much as Vladimir Putin. The New Tsar is a
riveting, immensely detailed biography of Putin that explains in
full-bodied, almost Shakespearean fashion why he acts the way he
does.'
*Robert D. Kaplan*
'The reptilian, poker-faced former KGB agent, now Russian president
seemingly for life, earns a fair, engaging treatment in the hands
of New York Times journalist Myers… [who] clearly knows
his material and primary subject… Myers shows how Putin convinced
everyone that this way of operating was part of the Russian soul
and how he perpetuated it through an archaic form of Russian
corruption… Myers astutely notes how Putin’s speeches increasingly
harkened back to the worst period of the Cold War era’s dictates by
Soviet strongmen… A highly effective portrait of a frighteningly
powerful autocrat.'
*Kirkus (starred review)*
'Such an understanding of Putin’s early life and the evolution of
his leadership is lacking. [Myers’s] methodology is sound and, I
believe, the only way to capture such an intimate understanding of
Russia’s iron man.'
*Ian Bremmer, author of Superpower*
'Combining skilled story telling, psychological examination and
political investigation, Steven Lee Myers succeeds brilliantly in
this biography of Vladimir Putin. Explaining the dangers that
Putin’s Russia may and does pose, Myers effortlessly and expertly
guides the reader through the complexities of the Russian Byzantine
governing style and the country’s politics and identity. In the
end, the book provides one of the most comprehensive answers to a
puzzling question: despite all the changes that Russia has gone
through during communism and post-communism, why is it still an
empire of the tsar?'
*Nina Khrushcheva*
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