One of the Wall Street Journal's Best Business Books of 2015
The bestselling author of Bringing Down the House (sixty-three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and the basis for the hit movie 21) and The Accidental Billionaires (the basis for the Academy Award-winning film The Social Network) delivers an epic drama of wealth, rivalry, and betrayal among mega-wealthy Russian oligarchs--and its international repercussions.
Once Upon a Time in Russia is the untold true story of the larger-than-life billionaire oligarchs who surfed the waves of privatization to reap riches after the fall of the Soviet regime: "Godfather of the Kremlin" Boris Berezovsky, a former mathematician whose first entrepreneurial venture was running an automobile reselling business, and Roman Abramovich, his dashing young prot g who built a multi-billion-dollar empire of oil and aluminum. Locked in a complex, uniquely Russian partnership, Berezovsky and Abramovich battled their way through the "Wild East" of Russia with Berezovsky acting as the younger man's krysha--literally, his roof, his protector.
Written with the heart-stopping pacing of a thriller--but even more compelling because it is true--this story of amassing obscene wealth and power depicts a rarefied world seldom seen up close. Under Berezovsky's krysha, Abramovich built one of Russia's largest oil companies from the ground up and in exchange made cash deliveries--including 491 million dollars in just one year. But their relationship frayed when Berezovsky attacked President Vladimir Putin in the media--and had to flee to the UK. Abramovich continued to prosper. Dead bodies trailed Berezovsky's footsteps, and threats followed him to London, where an associate of his died painfully and famously of Polonium poisoning. Then Berezovsky himself was later found dead, declared a suicide.
Exclusively sourced, capturing a momentous period in recent world history, Once Upon a Time in Russia is at once personal and political, offering an unprecedented look into the wealth, corruption, and power behind what Graydon Carter called "the story of our age."
Show moreOne of the Wall Street Journal's Best Business Books of 2015
The bestselling author of Bringing Down the House (sixty-three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and the basis for the hit movie 21) and The Accidental Billionaires (the basis for the Academy Award-winning film The Social Network) delivers an epic drama of wealth, rivalry, and betrayal among mega-wealthy Russian oligarchs--and its international repercussions.
Once Upon a Time in Russia is the untold true story of the larger-than-life billionaire oligarchs who surfed the waves of privatization to reap riches after the fall of the Soviet regime: "Godfather of the Kremlin" Boris Berezovsky, a former mathematician whose first entrepreneurial venture was running an automobile reselling business, and Roman Abramovich, his dashing young prot g who built a multi-billion-dollar empire of oil and aluminum. Locked in a complex, uniquely Russian partnership, Berezovsky and Abramovich battled their way through the "Wild East" of Russia with Berezovsky acting as the younger man's krysha--literally, his roof, his protector.
Written with the heart-stopping pacing of a thriller--but even more compelling because it is true--this story of amassing obscene wealth and power depicts a rarefied world seldom seen up close. Under Berezovsky's krysha, Abramovich built one of Russia's largest oil companies from the ground up and in exchange made cash deliveries--including 491 million dollars in just one year. But their relationship frayed when Berezovsky attacked President Vladimir Putin in the media--and had to flee to the UK. Abramovich continued to prosper. Dead bodies trailed Berezovsky's footsteps, and threats followed him to London, where an associate of his died painfully and famously of Polonium poisoning. Then Berezovsky himself was later found dead, declared a suicide.
Exclusively sourced, capturing a momentous period in recent world history, Once Upon a Time in Russia is at once personal and political, offering an unprecedented look into the wealth, corruption, and power behind what Graydon Carter called "the story of our age."
Show moreBen Mezrich graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. He has published seventeen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Accidental Billionaires, which was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film The Social Network, and Bringing Down the House, which was the basis for the hit movie 21. He lives in Boston.
Assassination plots, intimidation tactics, political maneuvering
and money in unfeasibly large quantities... Based on a year of
interviews with high-profile sources, it fleshes out almost 20
years of history with journalistic color and anecdotes. -- "GQ"
Mezrich relates the story in the form of a true-life novel. The
bestselling author has used the device before, including in The
Accidental Billionaires, which provided the basis for The Social
Network... Interviews, first-person sources, court documents, and
newspaper accounts as the basis for his narrative... make the story
more accessible.-- "Financial Times"
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