Reviews

"Freeland's incisive and very readable work gives the reader a genuine sense for the roller-coaster quality of Russia's life in its difficult transition from Communism to God-knows-what!"
-- Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security advisor
"Sale of the Century is the best guide I've read to the most important story of the 1990s: Russia's stormy transition to capitalism. Freeland is a natural-born storyteller, and the stories matter, for she has used her access to many of the key players to identify the key moments on which the history turned. She's good at evoking character, too: Gaidar, Chubais, Yeltsin himself are all vivid and alive in all their complexity. Most of all, the whole book is informed by a high degree of economic and political intelligence, and her judgment that the reformers should have been more, rather than less, radical challenges conventional wisdom. The book confirms what insiders have known for some time: that this young Canadian journalist is a world-class expert on Russia and its future."
-- Michael Ignatieff, author of "Blood and Belonging and "The Russian Album
"Chrystia Freeland gets across as no other author does the human factor in the transformation of Russia. This is precisely the element that often gets left out of both impersonal academic portraits and the calculations of Western policymakers. As Freeland shows vividly, it is impossible to understand the post-Soviet transition -- its benign side and its malign side -- without getting inside the heads of the people who have made it happen."
-- Timothy J. Colton, director, Davis Center for Russian Studies, Harvard University