The New York State Writers Institute presents a reading by Masha Gessen, Moscow-based journalist, and author of the new book, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (2012). Drawing on previously untapped sources, she presents a portrait of a ruthless politician underestimated by friends and enemies alike, who has dismantled his nation's democratic and free market reforms in order to establish himself as totalitarian leader of the "new Russia." The book was the talk of the 2011 Frankfurt Book Fair due to its provocative and closely guarded material. Publishers Weekly said, "A Putin biography secretly lights up Frankfurt?. It was the book that, as one insider put it, you had to 'go into a closet to read.'" The author of six previous books on Russia, Gessen has written for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, New Republic, Granta, and Slate, among other publications.
*A free Q&A/seminar will also take place with the author earlier in the day at 4:15PM in the Standish Room of the Science Library, UAlbany Uptown Campus.
