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Reader's Corner

Reader's Corner

  • Our guest is one of Russia’s top investigative journalists, working and living in exile. In his latest book, co-authored once again by his fellow investigative journalist, Irina Borogan, Our Dear Friends in Moscow follows a group of young Russians, part of an idealistic generation who came of age in Moscow at the end of the 20 th century – the communist era had just imploded and an exciting and uncertain future lay ahead of them. Initially, the group enjoyed the freedoms of the new era, but the notion that Russia was destined to join the West, and Europe, in a new partnership began to fade. The Russian economy crashed, civil war stalked Chechnya, and terrorism came to Moscow. By the time of Vladimir Putin’s second and seemingly endless term as president, the country had embraced a kind of ethno-nationalism and was heading for war at home and abroad.
  • For nearly eight decades, North Korea has marched defiantly to its own beat, shaking off its Soviet and Chinese sponsors to emerge as the world’s most enigmatic nation—a nuclear-armed state ruled by a dictatorial dynasty. Underpinning the state is a personality cult more soaked in religiosity than those constructed by Stalin or Mao—one that traces its roots back to the Christian fervor of post–Civil War America.