Accidental Czar
The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin
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3.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
This riveting graphic novel biography chronicles Vladimir Putin's rise from a mid-level KGB officer to the autocratic leader of Russia and reveals the truth behind the strongman persona he has spent his career cultivating.
In the West’s collective imagination, Vladimir Putin is a devious cartoon villain, constantly plotting and scheming to destroy his enemies around the globe and in Ukraine. But how did an undistinguished mid-level KGB officer become one of the most powerful leaders in Russian history? And how much of Putin’s tough-guy persona is a calculated performance?
In Accidental Czar, Andrew S. Weiss, a former White House Russia expert, and Brian “Box” Brown show how Putin has successfully cast himself as a cunning, larger-than-life political mastermind—and how the rest of the world has played into the Kremlin’s hands by treating him as one. They shatter all of these myths and expose the man behind the façade.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Weiss, a Russia analyst and former White House adviser, and cartoonist Brown (Child Star) shred Vladimir Putin's hypermasculine persona in this witty and incisive graphic biography. The Putin of these pages is less of a mastermind and more of a man constantly on the defensive and ruled by paranoia, whose attempts at fomenting discord occasionally grant him short-term advantages. Focusing on the constant political maneuvering behind Putin's ascension from low-level KGB bureaucrat in the 1980s to global chaos agent, Weiss argues that Putin operates in a country founded on grift: "What we think of as corruption is actually the glue that holds everything together." Russia's invasions of neighboring countries, notably Ukraine, are framed as part of Putin's strategy to gird the country from perceived Western aggression, which he believes has driven seismic protests like the Arab Spring. Weiss's enjoyable and digestible unwinding of Putin's labyrinthine history is complemented by Brown's wry, stripped-down comics. Readers scrambling to understand shifting global politics will appreciate this accessible takedown of a larger-than-life figure.
