Former New York Times Moscow bureau chief Steven Lee Myers has followed Vladimir Putin's path for many years, and gives us the fullest, most absorbing account we have of his rise to power. This gripping narrative elucidates a cool and calculating man with enormous ambition and few scruples.

We see Putin, a former KGB agent, come to office in 2000 as a reformer, cutting taxes, expanding property rights, bringing a measure of order and eventual prosperity to millions whose only experience of democracy in the early years following the Soviet collapse was instability, poverty, and criminality.