Kicking the Kremlin: Russia's New Dissidents and the Battle to Topple Putin
British journalist Bennetts squarely, bravely tackles contemporary Russia, specifically, Vladimir Putin and his United Russia banditry. Westerners may have noted that Putin left and came back, but here’s the electrifying story, filled with interviews with politicians and people on the street, quotes and statistics, and footnoted facts that make this book an eerie, bone-­shaking, you-are-there exposé. Some citizens long for the stability of communism; others watch state-controlled television and hope for the best. Yet intellectuals, hipsters, members of the punk-rock group Pussy Riot, and others, in particular, Alexei Navalny, have fought back against Putin’s outright, untrammeled corruption, using social media to rally the masses, mostly city dwellers, into action, even though action against Putin often leads to trumped-up charges, imprisonment, and worse. Bennetts attends the marches and rallies, chases down the interviews, and writes with clarity and wryness about, ultimately, the historical willingness to seek a savior figure that will rescue Russia from itself. --Eloise Kinney