Synopses & Reviews
"A compassionate glimpse into the extremes where the new Russia meets the old," writes Robert Legvold () about Andrew Meier's enthralling new work. Journeying across a resurgent and reputedly free land, Meier has produced a virtuosic mix of nuanced history, lyric travelogue, and unflinching reportage. Throughout, Meier captures the country's present limbo--a land rich in potential but on the brink of staggering back into tyranny--in an account that is by turns heartrending and celebratory, comic and terrifying. A 2003 New York Public Library Book to Remember. is the best investigation of post-Soviet Russia since David Remnick's . Andrew Meier is a truly penetrating eyewitness."--Robert Conquest, author of ; "If President Bush were to read only the chapters regarding Chechnya in Meier's , he would gain a priceless education about Putin's Russia."--Zbigniew Brzezinski "Even after the fall of Communism, most American reporting on Russia often goes no further than who's in and who's out in the Kremlin and the business oligarchy. Andrew Meier's Russia reaches far beyond . . . this Russia is one where, as Meier says, history has a hard time hiding. Readers could not easily find a livelier or more insightful guide."--Adam Hochschild, author of and "From the pointless war in Chechnya to the wild, exhilarating, and dispiriting East and the rise of Vladimir Putin, the former KGB officer--it's all here in great detail, written in the layers the story deserves, with insight, passion, and genuine affection."--Michael Specter, staff writer, ; co-chief, Moscow Bureau, 1995-98. "[Meier's] knowledge of the country and his abiding love for its people stands out on every page of this book....But it is his linguistic fluency, in particular, which enables Mr. Meier to dig so deeply into Russia's black earth."-- "A wonderful travelogue that depicts the Russian people yet again trying to build a new life without really changing their old one."--William Taubman, Book Review.
Synopsis
"That is an extraordinary work is, for anyone who has known Russia, beyond question."--George Kennan
About the Author
Andrew Meier, the author of Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall, is a recent Fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers and currently a writer-in-residence at the New School University. He lives in New York City.