From Cold War to Hot Peace, Michael McFaul
From Cold War to Hot Peace, Michael McFaul
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From Cold War to Hot Peace
An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia

Author: Michael McFaul

Narrator: L.J. Ganser

Unabridged: 20 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/12/2018

Synopsis

In 2008, when Michael McFaul was asked to leave his perch at Stanford and join an unlikely presidential campaign, he had no idea that he would find himself at the beating heart of one of today's most contentious and consequential international relationships. As President Barack Obama's adviser on Russian affairs, McFaul helped craft the United States' policy known as "reset" that fostered new and unprecedented collaboration between the two countries. And then, as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, he had a front-row seat when this fleeting, hopeful moment crumbled with Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency. This riveting inside account combines history and memoir to tell the full story of U.S.-Russia relations from the fall of the Soviet Union to the new rise of the hostile, paranoid Russian president. From the first days of McFaul's ambassadorship, the Kremlin actively sought to discredit and undermine him, hassling him with tactics that included dispatching protesters to his front gates, slandering him on state media, and tightly surveilling him, his staff, and his family.

From Cold War to Hot Peace is an essential account of the most consequential global confrontation of our time.

About Michael McFaul

Michael McFaul is professor of political science, director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served for five years in the Obama administration, first at the White House as special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council, then as U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation. Dr. McFaul is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to the Washington Post. He has authored or coauthored several books, including Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in international relations and Slavic languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European studies from Stanford University, then completed his D. Phil. in international relations at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Trish on July 23, 2018

I guess one doesn’t get to be ambassador to a nation important to our security concerns by being a shrinking violet. McFaul clearly is not that. Right from the start he admits that he sometimes mixed his academic concerns with activism. He thought the moment for the Russia’s transition to democracy......more

Goodreads review by Steven on May 25, 2018

Former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul has chosen a crucial moment in our relationship with Moscow to write his part memoir, narrative history, and analysis of what has transpired over the last twenty-five years between the United States and Russia. Today, it appears that relations between the t......more

Goodreads review by David on September 10, 2018

You won't need me for a summary of this book. Goodreads provides a sufficient overview of its basic contents. Instead, I'll give my general thoughts. For someone like myself (whoever that might be), I find this memoir invaluable. Even though I work as office staff in a political science department a......more

Goodreads review by Ian on January 31, 2018

This is a great perspective on U.S. interest/involvement in Russian democracy. Chronicles individual Americans' role in the fall of the Soviet Union/brief flirtation with Russian democracy and the authoritarian rise of Putin. Spotlights the failure of the United States in funding a peace in Russia b......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on January 06, 2020

This is a long hard slog on what should be a very interesting topic - the decline of Russian/US relations under the rise of the new autocratic Vladimir Putin. All the elements are there from an author who was there when the Soviet Union broke up and who eventually would becomes Obama's policy adviso......more

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