can you recommend any bios on putin?
Sure. I haven't read a ton of books about Putin/Russia, but there are four books in particular that I have and felt were really good.
•Putin by Philip Short (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) This 2022 title is the most recent book I can personally recommend and the only one published since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Short also wrote two other great books on autocrats that I'd suggest checking out -- Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, and Mao: The Man Who Made China.
•The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin by Steven Lee Myers (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Myers, who has been reporting from around the world for decades for the New York Times, published this book in 2015 and it reveals a closer and more-detailed look at Putin the person than outsiders have ever had before.
•The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Born in Russia and now an American citizen, Gessen, who is now known as M. Gessen is a prominent critic of Putin's rule. They examine how a relatively low-level, seemingly unimpressive KGB operative somehow rose to become Boris Yeltsin's hand-picked successor and one of the most powerful people of the 21st century.
•Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser (BOOK | KINDLE) I make a point of getting every book written by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, whether it's something the married couple has written together or the many books they've written on their own. Published in 2007, after Baker and Glasser finished serving as chiefs of the Washington Post's Moscow bureau in the early years of Putin's first stretch in the Russian Presidency, this book focuses on how Putin impacted a Russia that was rapidly undergoing drastic changes in the 15 years since the Soviet Union collapsed and the backsliding from the delicate form of democracy that Boris Yeltsin had attempted to implement after the end of the Cold War.
