The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin

A chilling and unflinching portrait of one of the most fearsome figures in world politics.
 
       In 1999, the “Family” surrounding Boris Yeltsin went looking for a successor to the ailing and increasingly unpopular president. Vladimir Putin, with very little governmental or administrative experience—he’d been deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, and briefly, director of the secret police—nevertheless seemed the perfect choice: a “faceless” creature whom Yeltsin and his cronies coul…