Putin's Russia The rise of a dictator

Putting the autocratic leader under a microscope, Cunningham paints a terrifying picture of Vladimir Putin's reign over Russia. From idealization of and membership in the KGB, to the ever-growing list of assassinations and imprisonments carried out in his name (it is difficult and dangerous to lay direct blame, as seen in the comic), to his successful amending of the constitution to stay in office well past the original term limits, we see a leader whose only weapons are fear and violence. It is unfortunate, then, to learn how the international community has failed to step in--though there may be change on the horizon. While the subject at hand is never lighthearted, Cunningham is able to bring enough humor into it all with his brilliant cartooning to keep readers from drowning. If a drawing of Putin with a Pinocchio nose that ends with the Twitter logo doesn't make you laugh, then perhaps the recurring, disembodied long arm of the law will! Will appeal to readers of Cunningham's other work (such as Billionaires, 2021) and readers of political biographies.

In this blistering broadside of a graphic biography, Cunningham (Billionaires) outlines the life of the modern world's most powerful autocrat. Acknowledging that Vladimir Putin's early history is sketchily documented, Cunningham still provides a timeline for the rise of an unlikely czar. Born in 1952 in war-ravaged Leningrad, the young Putin dreamed of joining the KGB, which he did in 1975. Returning from East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he "mysteriously found" government jobs that positioned him to take advantage of the 1990s post-Soviet chaos. Attaching himself to powerful men, Putin became president in 2000 and leveraged crises like the 2004 Beslan terrorist attack to "further consolidate his power" with xenophobic and homophobic appeals to nationalism and masculinity. Presented as an unknowable cipher--Cunningham's bright, flat art creates a kind of blank of his subject--Putin emerges here as corruptly self-enriching (stealing perhaps $200 billion) and amoral, and connected to numerous murders (attempted and successful) of journalists and politicians. After chronicling the shadow wars (Ukraine, Syria), disinformation campaigns, and the interference in the 2016 U.S. election that Putin has used to keep rivals off-balance, Cunningham castigates American leaders for having "missed Putin's transformation" from bureaucrat into "megalomaniacal dictator." It's an infuriated and eye-opening guide to a real-life supervillain. (Feb.)

Cunningham (Billionaires: The Lives of the Rich and Powerful) details Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin's rise to become one of the most powerful--and potentially dangerous--men on the planet in this riveting, thoroughly researched biography. Born in 1952, Putin's spent his childhood in St. Petersburg, where he developed a reputation as a vicious street fighter. In 1975 he was recruited by the KGB and sent to Dresden, where he recruited assets to smuggle Western technology into the Eastern Bloc. After ascending the KGB's ranks, he left the intelligence service to become a government bureaucrat, and in 1991 found himself well-positioned to exploit, for personal gain, the economic and political turmoil created by the Soviet Union's demise. Putin amassed a personal fortune before being elected president in 2000. From there, Cunningham details the many cases in which Putin's opponents have been killed and examines his administration's foreign policy; Cunningham finally concludes that his subject represents a threat to global democracy. VERDICT Cunningham's simplistic, unobtrusive cartooning and keen ability to communicate a clear narrative (even with the multitude of characters and historical events detailed here) create an insightful, often-chilling account of both Putin and Russian history since the fall of the Soviet Union.