
Putin
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Keeble
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By:
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Philip Short
About this listen
"In a deep, resonant voice, Jonathan Keeble gives a splendid narration of this long and well-researched biography of Vladimir Putin."- AudioFile Magazine
This program is read by award-winning actor Jonathan Keeble.
The first comprehensive, fully up-to-date biography of Vladimir Putin, woven into the tumultuous saga of Russia over the last sixty years
Vladimir Putin is the world’s most dangerous man. Alone among world leaders, he has the power to reduce the United States and Europe to ashes in a nuclear firestorm and has threatened to do so. He invades his neighbors, most recently Ukraine, meddles in western elections, and orders assassinations inside and outside Russia. His regime is autocratic and deeply corrupt. But that is only half the story.
Unflinching, hard-hitting, and objective, Philip Short’s biography gives us the whole tale, up to the present day. To the fullest extent anyone has yet been able, Short cracks open the strongman’s thick carapace to reveal the man underneath those bare-chested horseback rides. In this deeply researched account, listeners meet the Putin who slept in the same room as his parents until he was twenty-five years old, who backed out of his wedding right beforehand, and who learned English in order to be able to talk to George W. Bush.
Vladimir Putin is wreaking havoc in Europe, threatening global peace and stability and exposing his fellow citizens to devastating economic countermeasures. Yet puzzlingly many Russians continue to support him. This audiobook is essential listening for anyone who wants to understand the many facets of the man behind the mask that Putin wears on the world stage.
Putin will be the last word for years to come.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company.
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- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War—and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime—and Russia itself—at risk of destruction. Why? Drawing on over 25 years’ experience working in Moscow, journalist Owen Matthews provides the answer. He takes us inside the COVID bubble where Putin conceived his invasion plans in a fog of nationalist fantasy and bad information.
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Comprehensive Account of the War Through September 2022
- By Jason777 on 12-30-22
By: Owen Matthews
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Mr. Putin
- Operative in the Kremlin
- By: Fiona Hill, Clifford G. Gaddy
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 17 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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From the KGB to the Kremlin: a multidimensional portrait of the man at war with the West. Where do Vladimir Putin's ideas come from? How does he look at the outside world? What does he want, and how far is he willing to go? The great lesson of the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was the danger of misreading the statements, actions, and intentions of the adversary. Today, Vladimir Putin has become the greatest challenge to European security and the global world order in decades.
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Not a good narration.
- By IBH on 07-22-20
By: Fiona Hill, and others
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The Future Is History
- How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own - as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings.
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The author is an international treasure
- By ThreeGems on 10-16-17
By: Masha Gessen
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Putin and the Return of History
- How the Kremlin Rekindled the Cold War
- By: Martin Sixsmith, Daniel Sixsmith - contributor
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Vladimir Putin is a paradox. In the early years of his presidency, he appeared to commit himself to friendship with the West, suggesting that Russia could join the European Union or even NATO. He said he supported free-market democracy and civil rights. But the Putin of those years is unrecognisable today. The Putin of the 2020s is an autocratic nationalist, dedicated to repression at home and anti-Western militarism abroad.
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The historical information.
- By Calvin R. Young on 08-25-24
By: Martin Sixsmith, and others
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The Weaponisation of Everything
- A Field Guide to the New Way of War
- By: Mark Galeotti
- Narrated by: Mark Galeotti
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Hybrid war, grey-zone warfare, unrestricted war: Today, traditional conflict - fought with guns, bombs, and drones - has become too expensive to wage, too unpopular at home, and too difficult to manage. In an age when America threatens Europe with sanctions, and when China spends billions buying influence abroad, the world is heading for a new era of permanent low-level conflict, often unnoticed, undeclared, and unending.
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Clear, concise, and thought provoking
- By Dad / Husband (who rarely reviews) on 03-08-22
By: Mark Galeotti
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Punishing Putin
- Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia
- By: Stephanie Baker
- Narrated by: Jennifer Jill Araya
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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From seizing superyachts to manipulating the global price of oil to trying to block the sale of military technology to Russia, we learn how the White House coordinated with top officials in London and Brussels to freeze a staggering $300 billion in foreign currency reserves accumulated in the West by Russia’s central bank. Mobilizing an army of white collar-crime investigators and experts on international law, Baker explores how the West has cracked down on illicit Russian money by targeting oligarchs, one superyacht at a time, and their enablers around the world.
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Interesting in-depth storytelling
- By EBM on 10-01-24
By: Stephanie Baker
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The Gates of Europe
- A History of Ukraine
- By: Serhii Plokhy
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Ukraine is currently embroiled in a tense fight with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence. But today's conflict is only the latest in a long history of battles over Ukraine's territory and its existence as a sovereign nation. As the award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues in The Gates of Europe, we must examine Ukraine's past in order to understand its present and future.
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An extraordinarily good book
- By Specs2789 on 03-01-23
By: Serhii Plokhy
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The War for Ukraine
- Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire
- By: Mick Ryan
- Narrated by: Grant Cartwright
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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The Russo-Ukraine War is a vital learning opportunity for military strategists across the globe. The first and clearest lesson to be gleaned from it is this: the soundness of a military's strategy and the nimbleness with which it can adapt to unforeseen circumstances are the two most important factors in deciding victory or defeat. The War for Ukraine analyzes the war through these twin lenses of strategy and adaptation, detailing how each army has succeeded or failed to plan for and adapt to this twenty-first century war.
By: Mick Ryan
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Midnight in Moscow
- A Memoir from the Front Lines of Russia's War Against the West
- By: John J. Sullivan, General Jim Mattis
- Narrated by: John J. Sullivan, Matt Godfrey
- Length: 17 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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A memoir of service by the American ambassador who was on the diplomatic front lines when Putin invaded Ukraine, Midnight in Moscow is the first behind-the-scenes account of how U.S.-Russia relations hit their nadir—and a playbook for our unfolding confrontation.
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This Democrat Learned Details Don't Make Job Easy
- By floweraddict on 01-22-25
By: John J. Sullivan, and others
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Forged in War
- A military history of Russia from its beginnings to today
- By: Mark Galeotti
- Narrated by: Simon Shepherd
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The national identity has been forged in the furnace of war. From the medieval kingdom of Rus battling against a Scandinavian princes and Mongol emperors, to its own empire-building conflicts in 19th-century Asia, to the formative wars of the 20th century which saw Russia pitch from Tsarist empire to communist state and defender against Nazism, all these conflicts stained the lands of Russia red with blood. A weak post-Cold War Russia then turned to Putin, who created a new mood for martial triumphalism which led directly to the Ukrainian war.
By: Mark Galeotti
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Freezing Order
- A True Story of Russian Money Laundering, State-Sponsored Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath
- By: Bill Browder
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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When Browder’s young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in a Moscow jail in 2009, Browder cast aside his business career and made it his life’s mission to pursue justice for Sergei. One of the first steps of that mission was to uncover who had killed Sergei and profited from the $230 million corruption scheme that he had exposed. As Browder and his team tracked the money that flowed out of Russia—through the Baltics and Cyprus and on to Western Europe and the Americas—they discovered that Vladimir Putin himself was one of the beneficiaries of the crime.
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Red Notice Part II —- The Empire Struck Out
- By R. Alembik on 04-16-22
By: Bill Browder
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All the Kremlin's Men
- Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin
- By: Mikhail Zygar
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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All the Kremlin's Men is a gripping narrative of an accidental king and a court out of control. Based on an unprecedented series of interviews with Vladimir Putin's inner circle, this book presents a radically different view of power and politics in Russia. The image of Putin as a strongman is dissolved. In its place is a weary figurehead buffeted - if not controlled - by the men who at once advise and deceive him. The regional governors and bureaucratic leaders are immovable objects, far more powerful in their fiefdoms than the president himself.
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Enough with the Russian accents!
- By Emma Jane Top on 12-17-17
By: Mikhail Zygar
What listeners say about Putin
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- DaveF
- 10-03-23
An excellent and objective biography.
Author Philip Short has produced one of the best biographies I've read in a long time. Far from just portraying Putin as crazy egomaniac (as some of us would like to believe) he comes across as a brilliant ruthless leader with a long memory and a chip on his shoulder about the West's treatment of him and Russia. Make no mistake, Putin is a thug and very dangerous. But most westerners don't have any idea what is motivating his sensless destructive wars, especially the current one in Ukraine. This biography should be required reading.
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- Vaghenag
- 12-03-22
Very informative close to reality
Philip short makes us feel the airborne is a Russian :superb history all need to know
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- Anonymous User
- 01-07-23
Must listen, especially in current times
First audiobook I’ve heard, sets a very high bar for anything else I listen. The narration is perfect — varying tones based on the topic being discussed, natural shifts within chapters, no overwhelming accents — truly engaged throughout the 29 hours!
The book is a great biography of Putin, which is missing its final chapter. However, with everything going on in the world now, it offers a view into his thinking and the feelings of some Russians of his generation. From stories about his childhood to his days in the KGB and eventually into the Russian political administration, the book has a natural transition. It is filled with many stories of conversations amongst world leaders and provides a unique insight into Russian view of major world events since the end of the Cold War.
Book is a must read, provides a balanced view to a very complex man.
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-24-22
Very timely
Perfect listen turning these uncertain times. Enjoyed all aspects of this detailed timely and most interesting book
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- SC
- 01-05-23
More than thorough
Impressive depth of knowledge and reporting. Lost strength by a capable performance, which nonetheless, became annoying as the "voice" of direct quotes became ubiquitous. Highly recommended regardless.
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- Kindle Customer
- 04-20-25
Exceptionally Researched
A revealing look behind the curtain of a very enigmatic leader. There are many stories in this book and the audiobook narrator did a good job. He brought a lot of seriousness to his tone which made the reading even better as it sounded both scholarly/foreboding.
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- robert
- 10-06-23
for once a balanced book concerning a world leade
Mr Short gives you both sides of the story which is refreshing. He doesn't portray Putin as a raving crazy man nor does he sugar coat his faults. Usually writers take sides but Mr. Short does not in this incredibly informative work.
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- Linda
- 08-28-22
Putin: in context
Research and context shows how Russian actions and policy are often skewed differently from western thought. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to open their mind to understanding from another perspective.
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- Daniel Mccarty
- 08-05-22
Wow, what a book!
29 hours of everything you wanted to know about Putin. Every major event in his life, every major decision, every influence, you can really see why Putin feels he is the injured party in many of his confrontations. The author kept me interested for 29 hours….an amazing feat. One of the very best books I’ve listened to.
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- M & B
- 08-11-24
Well done with one flaw
This is a significant biography of probably the most important statesman of our age, Russia's president Putin.
The author does well avoiding most opportunities for open bias throughout discussion of Putin's youth and rise to power. But the closer the narrative got to the present, the more biases began popping in. On topics of Covid and the Ukraine, among others, the author injects his bias in favor of the neo-liberal establishment's position. if he could have left that out it would have been an even more improvessive work.
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2 people found this helpful