Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs and the Greatest Wealth in History

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 protégé 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.”


Ben Mezrich (Author)
Jeremy Bobb (Reader)


Look also:

High School Level - Early Amer...icans through the Forty-Niners

Historical Jesus

History of Ancient Egypt

History of Christianity in the Reformation Era

History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts

History of Hitlers Empire, 2nd Edition

History of Russia: From Peter the Great to Gorbachev

History of Science - Antiquity to 1700

History of Science: 1700-1900

History of the Bible

History of the English Language, 2nd Edition

History of the Supreme Court

History of the United States, 2nd Edition

History of World Literature

How to Become a SuperStar Student, 2nd Edition

How to Grow Anything: Container Gardening Tips & Techniques

Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations

Long 19th Century: European History from 1789 to 1917

America and the World: A Diplomatic History

World War II: A Military and Social History

Greek and Persian Wars

World War I: The "Great War"

The Skeptic's Guide to American History

Masters of War: History’s Greatest Strategic Thinkers

London: A Short History of the Greatest City in the Western World

American Civil War

Food: A Cultural Culinary History

Rise and Fall of Soviet Communism: A History of 20th-Century Russia

From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History

Making History: How Great Historians Interpret the Past

Terror of History: Mystics, He...tches in the Western Tradition

A History of European Art

Between the Rivers: The History of Ancient Mesopotamia

From Monet to Van Gogh: A History of Impressionism

HIST 251: Early Modern England...y under the Tudors and Stuarts

HIST 116: The American Revolution

HIST 276: France Since 1871

HIST 210: The Early Middle Ages, 284–1000