Gripping beach reads on Putin, Russia and election meddling
August is the month you escape from the real or surreal world, including Trumpmania.
But for those who can’t let go, here are my picks for relevant reading this summer, with a focus on democracy and Russia.
If that seems too depressing, you can always retreat to a mystery novel. Given the state of the world and our country, you may want to read on.
Because readers often ask me what to read about Vladimir Putin’s Russia and/or election meddling, here’s a Russia list that goes beyond the headlines.
• “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia,” by Peter Pomerantsev. This 2014 book (out in paperback) by a Russian-born British journalist reads like fiction, with a cast of oligarchs, Mafiosi and lost souls as Pomerantsev takes a job in Russian TV and describes from the inside how statecontrolled media manipulates Russian minds. Funny, frightening and too close for comfort.
• “Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man’s Fight for Justice,” by Bill Browder. This American-born financier who invested in Russia fought rampant government corruption under Putin. In revenge, Kremlin cronies arrested his Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who was murdered in prison. Browder crusaded for a U.S. law, the Magnitsky act, which sanctioned those responsible for the murder. Putin has been trying — via the famous Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and at the Helsinki summit with Trump — to get the Magnitsky sanctions lifted. This thriller describes Browder’s fight for justice for Magnitsky and describes how Putin’s kleptocracy works.
• “Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians and Fake News,” by Clint Watts. A former FBI special agent and cybersecurity specialist, Watts lays out in gripping detail how Putin’s Russia manipulated U.S. social media, and how others can do likewise. You may think you’ve read everything about Russian meddling, but Watts’ book can still surprise you.
• “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,” by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. This book is a useful backgrounder for those who want to keep straight the cast of characters and history of the Robert Mueller investigation. These investigative reporters lay out all the details.
Turning to the home front, the deep dilemma of our times is dissected in “The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump” by Michiko Kakutani, the former chief book critic of The New York Times. At a time when objective reality seems a quaint concept, when social media blare bizarre conspiracy theories that many Americans take as gospel, and when a U.S. president damns real facts as “fake” while promoting fake news and falsehoods, we are in big trouble. A fascinating and erudite look at how and why “truth” has become an endangered idea.
Of the several other current books on threats to democracy, I found “How Democracies Die,” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, the most intriguing. Its main focus is on the importance of democratic norms that form the basis of our system — and are eroding. Other countries may enshrine democratic principles in their constitutions but that doesn’t mean they are followed. What makes America different, these Harvard professors argue, is that its democracy developed norms of tolerance and of institutional forbearance, which allowed Congress and the courts to function. When those norms are attacked and die, democracy can’t function.