RaveThe Wall Street JournalNothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, Mr. Pomeranstev’s sparkling collection of essays, takes us, as the subtitle promises, directly into \'the surreal heart of the new Russia.\' Here are the country girls who pay thousands of dollars for courses on how to catch a millionaire and the oligarchs who pay millions to the Kremlin in order to become billionaires ... Mr. Pomerantsev’s focus is centrally on television and the Kremlin’s obsession with its own image, but the book—his first—also provides great insight into the inner life of Russia’s glitterati in Moscow and in London ... Readers looking for a book about Kremlin politics will not find it here. Key political actors are mainly not discussed, and Mr. Putin is a latter-day Godot, omnipresent but offstage ... In Russia today, Mr. Pomerantsev powerfully demonstrates, the Kremlin’s modus operandi is to keep everyone on tenterhooks, all too aware that \'it can grab us and pull us in at any moment.\'
Mikhail Zygar
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... fascinating ... takes us deep into the secret world of the courtiers whose task is to shape Mr. Putin’s access to information so that he makes the 'right' decision ... the book, which reflects the breadth and depth of his sources inside Mr. Putin’s inner circle, was an immediate sensation when it was first published in Russia.
Arkady Ostrovsky
RaveThe Wall Street Journal[Ostrovsky's] sparkling prose and deep analysis provide not only a sweeping tour d’horizon of Russia’s malaise, but also a description of the process by which anti-modern ideas combine with postmodern actions to buttress the country’s authoritarian and kleptocratic system.
