SiberianLight posted a link to a BCC page that I thought might be interesting as I read the title: "The Best Books About Russia on the Radio." However, the BBC's title is a misleading because they found only negative books on recent Russian history. I can understand including a negative book or two, but the entire list is a who-is-who of Kremlin bashers. On top of that, the BBC can't even count!

• The Litvinenko File: the True Story of a Death Foretold, Martin Sixmith
• Tuesday - A Russian Diary by Anna Politikovskaya
• Wednesday - Inside Putin’s Russia by Andrew Jack
• Thursday - Blowing up Russia by Alexander Litvinenko
• Friday - a second extract from The Litvinenko File: the True Story of a Death Foretold

There are only four books. So not only could they not find a reasonably balanced book, but they could not even find five books.

I was quite certain that this was another Russian bashing by the western press. There must be some balanced books available in English. So I went to Amazon.com's advanced search. I searched for all books on the subject of Russia in Nonfiction that were published after 2006.

Let me give you an idea of what shows up in the list when sorted by bestselling:
First: Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror by Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky
Second: Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy by Anna Politkovskaya
The list just does not get much better from there with other top titles including "Death of a Dissident" "Cannibal Island" and so on.

So the Western public seems to be hungry for negative Russia books and the press both western and some Russians seem eager to provide the food. No thanks, I'll pass. And I am not even going to bother to give you the link to the BBC website. It is just not worth it. If you want it that badly, you'll have to go to SiberianLight to find the link.

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