Russia by Martin Sixsmith

This book's full title is Russian, a 1,000 Year Chronicle of the Wild East. .This is a well-written and very readable book on Russia. The author is a journalist and it shows. I know some of Russian history, especially recent history, so this is why I was attracted to this book. He talks about Russia always having autocratic tendencies and I did understand that.

Whatever the west thinks of Putin, I think that is it quite obvious that most Russians seem to like him. They want to be a great power again and seem to feel that Putin will do this. I think that the jury is still out on that. The book tries to give you an insight as to why the Russians like Putin.

There are, of course, some very good reviews of this book on Good Reads. Mostly they like the book but some complain and reasonably complain that most of the book is on the more recent history. This is probably understandable as the author is a journalist. There is a very interesting review by Mary Dejevsky on the Independent comparing this book the Rodric Braithwaite's book on Afghanistan. There is a short but interesting review on Kirkus Reviews.

This book is presented in many 13 minutes episodes on YouTube. There is an audio tape on You Tube giving a bibliography of Martin Sixsmith. There are some interviews with Martin Sixsmith, but they are very short, less than 3 minutes, with commercials beginning that are almost as long. Most of the interviews are about the film Philomena for which he wrote the story. There is an interesting one on Philomena with Steve Coogan and Martin Sixsmith. In the film Steve Coogan plays Martin Sixsmith. The interview is here. Martin Sixsmith gives a talk at AMBA, Association of MBAs Golden Awards and Gala Dinner in 2017.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.