Try free for 30 days
-
The Return of the Russian Leviathan
- Narrated by: Christopher Douyard
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $26.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
Overreach
- The Inside Story of Putin’s War Against Ukraine
- By: Owen Matthews
- Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War—and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime—and Russia itself—at risk of destruction. Why? Drawing on over 25 years’ experience working in Moscow, journalist Owen Matthews provides the answer. He takes us inside the COVID bubble where Putin conceived his invasion plans in a fog of nationalist fantasy and bad information.
-
-
Reads like fantasy
- By Matthew on 04-01-2023
-
The Decadent Society
- How We Became a Victim of Our Own Success
- By: Ross Douthat
- Narrated by: Ross Douthat
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The era of the coronavirus has tested America, and our leaders and institutions have conspicuously failed. That failure shouldn’t be surprising: Beneath social-media frenzy and reality-television politics, our era’s deep truths are elite incompetence, cultural exhaustion, and the flight from reality into fantasy. The Decadent Society explains what happens when a powerful society ceases advancing - how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemate, and demographic decline creates a unique civilizational crisis.
-
Russia's War
- By: Jade McGlynn
- Narrated by: Jade McGlynn
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early hours of February 24, 2022, Russian forces attacked Ukraine. The brutality of the Russian assault has horrified the world. But Russians themselves appear to be watching an entirely different war—one in which they are the courageous underdogs and kind-hearted heroes successfully battling a malign Ukrainian foe.
-
Spin Dictators
- The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century
- By: Sergei Guriev, Daniel Treisman
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spin Dictators traces how leaders such as Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and Peru's Alberto Fujimori pioneered less violent, more covert, and more effective methods of monopolizing power. They cultivated an image of competence, concealed censorship, and used democratic institutions to undermine democracy, all while increasing international engagement for financial and reputational benefits.
-
Putin's Wars
- From Chechnya to Ukraine
- By: Mark Galeotti
- Narrated by: David Sibley
- Length: 15 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Putin's Wars is a timely overview of the conflicts in which Russia has been involved since Vladimir Putin became prime minister and then president of Russia, from the First Chechen War to the two military incursions into Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and the eventual invasion of Ukraine itself. But it also looks more broadly at Putin's recreation of Russian military power and its expansion to include a range of new capabilities, from mercenaries to operatives in a relentless information war against Western powers.
-
Putin and the Return of History
- How the Kremlin Rekindled the Cold War
- By: Martin Sixsmith, Daniel Sixsmith - contributor
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vladimir Putin is a paradox. In the early years of his presidency, he appeared to commit himself to friendship with the West, suggesting that Russia could join the European Union or even NATO. He said he supported free-market democracy and civil rights. But the Putin of those years is unrecognisable today. The Putin of the 2020s is an autocratic nationalist, dedicated to repression at home and anti-Western militarism abroad.
-
Overreach
- The Inside Story of Putin’s War Against Ukraine
- By: Owen Matthews
- Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War—and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime—and Russia itself—at risk of destruction. Why? Drawing on over 25 years’ experience working in Moscow, journalist Owen Matthews provides the answer. He takes us inside the COVID bubble where Putin conceived his invasion plans in a fog of nationalist fantasy and bad information.
-
-
Reads like fantasy
- By Matthew on 04-01-2023
-
The Decadent Society
- How We Became a Victim of Our Own Success
- By: Ross Douthat
- Narrated by: Ross Douthat
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The era of the coronavirus has tested America, and our leaders and institutions have conspicuously failed. That failure shouldn’t be surprising: Beneath social-media frenzy and reality-television politics, our era’s deep truths are elite incompetence, cultural exhaustion, and the flight from reality into fantasy. The Decadent Society explains what happens when a powerful society ceases advancing - how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemate, and demographic decline creates a unique civilizational crisis.
-
Russia's War
- By: Jade McGlynn
- Narrated by: Jade McGlynn
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early hours of February 24, 2022, Russian forces attacked Ukraine. The brutality of the Russian assault has horrified the world. But Russians themselves appear to be watching an entirely different war—one in which they are the courageous underdogs and kind-hearted heroes successfully battling a malign Ukrainian foe.
-
Spin Dictators
- The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century
- By: Sergei Guriev, Daniel Treisman
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spin Dictators traces how leaders such as Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and Peru's Alberto Fujimori pioneered less violent, more covert, and more effective methods of monopolizing power. They cultivated an image of competence, concealed censorship, and used democratic institutions to undermine democracy, all while increasing international engagement for financial and reputational benefits.
-
Putin's Wars
- From Chechnya to Ukraine
- By: Mark Galeotti
- Narrated by: David Sibley
- Length: 15 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Putin's Wars is a timely overview of the conflicts in which Russia has been involved since Vladimir Putin became prime minister and then president of Russia, from the First Chechen War to the two military incursions into Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and the eventual invasion of Ukraine itself. But it also looks more broadly at Putin's recreation of Russian military power and its expansion to include a range of new capabilities, from mercenaries to operatives in a relentless information war against Western powers.
-
Putin and the Return of History
- How the Kremlin Rekindled the Cold War
- By: Martin Sixsmith, Daniel Sixsmith - contributor
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vladimir Putin is a paradox. In the early years of his presidency, he appeared to commit himself to friendship with the West, suggesting that Russia could join the European Union or even NATO. He said he supported free-market democracy and civil rights. But the Putin of those years is unrecognisable today. The Putin of the 2020s is an autocratic nationalist, dedicated to repression at home and anti-Western militarism abroad.
-
Overreach
- How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise
- By: Susan L. Shirk
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For three decades after Mao's death in 1976, China's leaders adopted a restrained approach to foreign policy. To facilitate the country's inexorable economic ascendance, and to prevent a backlash, they reassured the outside world of China's peaceful intentions. Then, as Susan Shirk shows, something changed. China went from fragile superpower to global heavyweight. Combining her decades of research and experience, Shirk, one of the world's most respected experts on Chinese politics, argues that we are now fully embroiled in a new cold war.
-
Getting Russia Right
- 1st Edition
- By: Thomas Graham
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With a practitioner's eye honed during decades of work on Russian affairs, Thomas Graham deftly traces the evolution of opposing ideas of national purpose that created an inherent tension in relations. Getting Russia Right identifies the blind spots that prevented Washington from seeing Russia as it really is and crafting a policy to advance American interests without provoking an aggressive Russian response.
-
Russia's War on Everybody
- And What It Means for You
- By: Keir Giles
- Narrated by: Keir Giles
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Russia's 2022 attack on Ukraine saw confrontation between Moscow and the West spill over into open conflict once again. But Russia has also been waging a clandestine war against the West for decades. Hostile acts abroad, from poisoning dissidents to shooting down airliners, interfering in elections, spying, hacking, and murdering, have long seemed to be the Kremlin's daily business. But what is it all for? Why does Russia consistently behave like this? Keir Giles explains how and why Russia pushes for more power and influence wherever it can reach, far beyond Ukraine.
-
The Strategy of Denial
- American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict
- By: Elbridge A. Colby
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Elbridge A. Colby was the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the most significant revision of US defense strategy in a generation. Here he lays out how America's defense must change to address China's growing power and ambition. Based firmly in the realist tradition but deeply engaged in current policy, this book offers a clear framework for what America's goals in confronting China must be, how its military strategy must change, and how it must prioritize these goals over its lesser interests.
-
The Weaponisation of Everything
- A Field Guide to the New Way of War
- By: Mark Galeotti
- Narrated by: Mark Galeotti
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hybrid war, grey-zone warfare, unrestricted war: Today, traditional conflict - fought with guns, bombs, and drones - has become too expensive to wage, too unpopular at home, and too difficult to manage. In an age when America threatens Europe with sanctions, and when China spends billions buying influence abroad, the world is heading for a new era of permanent low-level conflict, often unnoticed, undeclared, and unending.
-
-
informative
- By Aaron on 09-04-2023
-
Not One Inch
- America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate
- By: M.E. Sarotte
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based on over a hundred interviews and on secret records of White House-Kremlin contacts, Not One Inch shows how the United States successfully overcame Russian resistance in the 1990s to expand NATO to more than 900 million people. But it also reveals how Washington's hardball tactics transformed the era between the Cold War and the present day, undermining what could have become a lasting partnership.
-
-
Excellent and fascinating collection of facts!
- By Slava Pisarevskiy on 01-11-2022
-
My Russia
- War or Peace?
- By: Mikhail Shishkin, Gesche Ipsen - translator
- Narrated by: Matt Bates
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his timely new audiobook, Mikhail Shishkin, argues that Russia is not a 'riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma': we just don't know enough about it. So what is the real story behind Putin's autocratic regime and its invasion of Ukraine? In My Russia: War or Peace? Shishkin traces the roots of Russia's problems, from the 'Kievan Rus' via the Grand Duchy of Moscow, empire, revolution and Cold War, to the now thirty-year-old Russian Federation.
-
Three Dangerous Men
- Russia, China, Iran and the Rise of Irregular Warfare
- By: Seth G. Jones
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Defense expert Seth Jones argues that the US is woefully unprepared for the future of global competition. While America has focused on building fighter jets, missiles, and conventional warfighting capabilities, its three principal rivals - Russia, Iran, and China - have increasingly adopted irregular warfare: cyber attacks, the use of proxy forces, propaganda, espionage, and disinformation to undermine American power. Jones details the key steps the United States must take to alter how it thinks about - and engages in - competition before it is too late.
-
-
Great perspective
- By Joel Oates on 11-11-2023
-
Mr. Putin
- Operative in the Kremlin
- By: Fiona Hill, Clifford G. Gaddy
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 17 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the KGB to the Kremlin: a multidimensional portrait of the man at war with the West. Where do Vladimir Putin's ideas come from? How does he look at the outside world? What does he want, and how far is he willing to go? The great lesson of the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was the danger of misreading the statements, actions, and intentions of the adversary. Today, Vladimir Putin has become the greatest challenge to European security and the global world order in decades.
-
-
Putin is Russia
- By Anonymous User on 26-04-2020
-
Killer in the Kremlin
- By: John Sweeney
- Narrated by: John Sweeney
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Killer in the Kremlin, award-winning journalist John Sweeney takes listeners from the heart of Putin's Russia to the killing fields of Chechnya, to the embattled cities of an invaded Ukraine. In a disturbing exposé of Putin's sinister ambition, Sweeney draws on thirty years of his own reporting—from the Moscow apartment bombings to the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya, to the annexation of Crimea and a confrontation with Putin over the shooting down of flight MH17—to understand the true extent of Putin's long war.
-
-
Very passionately presented
- By Richard Gray on 11-02-2023
-
Putinomics
- Money and Power in Resurgent Russia
- By: Chris Miller
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Putinomics, Chris Miller examines the making of Russian economic policy since Vladimir Putin took power in 1999. Miller argues that Putin's economic strategy has functioned far more effectively than most Westerners realize. While acknowledging that part of Putin's successes - above all, quadrupling per capita GDP in just a decade and a half - can be attributed to cashing in on high oil prices, Miller details the government policies that have also been fundamental to Russia's growth.
-
Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know
- By: Serhy Yekelchyk
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ukraine's sudden prominence in American politics has compounded an already-widespread misunderstanding of what is actually happening in the nation. In the American media, Ukraine has come to signify an inherently corrupt place, rather than a real country struggling in the face of great challenges. Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know addresses Ukraine's relations with the West, particularly the United States, from the perspective of Ukrainians.
Publisher's Summary
Russia's relationship with its neighbors and with the West has worsened dramatically in recent years. Under Vladimir Putin's leadership, the country has annexed Crimea, begun a war in Eastern Ukraine, used chemical weapons on the streets of the UK, and created an army of Internet trolls to meddle in the US presidential elections. How can we understand this apparent relapse into aggressive imperialism and militarism?
In this book, Sergei Medvedev argues that this new wave of Russian nationalism is the result of mentalities that have long been embedded within the Russian psyche. Whereas in the West, the turbulent social changes of the 1960s and a rising awareness of the legacy of colonialism have modernized attitudes, Russia has been stymied by an enduring sense of superiority over its neighbors alongside a painful nostalgia for empire. It is this infantilized and irrational worldview that Putin and others have exploited, as seen most clearly in Russia's recent foreign policy decisions, including the annexation of Crimea.
This sharp and insightful book, full of irony and humor, shows how the archaic forces of imperial revanchism have been brought back to life, shaking Russian society and threatening the outside world. It will be of great interest to anyone trying to understand the forces shaping Russian politics and society today.