This is an insidious book, that fools you for quite a while into thinking it is an interesting and readable history ... bit pro-Russian for objectivity, perhaps ... and then whammo, suddenly you realise you are in fact reading total garbage. Possibly if I'd known more about Russian history before 1800 I would have spotted it earlier. My bad. This piece of crud could have been written by Vladimir Putin's propaganda department, and I'm not wholly convinced it wasn't. Do not cast this book aside lightly - throw it, with great force, into the nearest waste bin. ( )

I wish I could rate this book higher than a 3-star. It's a fun and interesting read. To some degree I feel like the author assumed the reader already had some background in Russian history, or 20th century history, since some important events were glossed, if mentioned at all. But one is necessarily limited in what one can cover in one book with the goal of covering a 26,000(?) year history of such a large region.

There are two reasons I can only give it 3-stars. First, the first chapter made me laugh outloud, then become incredibly irritated when I realized the author advocates biological determinism for the social characteristics of the "Russian People." In general, Malcom claims the harsh climate made a tough and adaptable people (as if any historian of any group of people couldn't make the same claim). Second, I admit I know almost nothing of Russian history. So any mistakes the author made I would not recognize. Yet one of the few facts I know to which the book refers, I know to be wrong. The author refers multiple times to "The Harvard Economist Jeremy Sachs" whose economic policies Yeltsin followed, with disastrous results. The correct name is Jeffrey Sachs, and since the mistake is made multiple times, it cannot simply be blamed on a typo. ( )