RaveThe Boston GlobeWilliam Taubman has written a fascinating, perceptive, and compelling account of the life of a brilliant, driven, but flawed leader who remains to this day, in the Amherst College professor’s eyes, a ‘tragic hero’ … Gorbachev chronicles a life and career, at once, improbable and extraordinarily dramatic … Gorbachev may one day be rehabilitated in the judgment of his fellow Russians. A decade or more from now, Putin and his Soviet-trained generation of leaders will also pass from power. Perhaps then, Taubman concludes in this magisterial book, a younger generation might begin to appreciate anew the extraordinary optimism, hope, and courage that Gorbachev brought to the Kremlin three decades ago when he changed the world for the better.
