As a British film and TV producer of Russian descent, Peter Pomerantsev was perfectly positioned to observe the rise—and the rules—of Putin’s Russia. The effect of this book is kaleidoscopic and a little disorienting as he interviews oligarchs and small-time criminals, international models, young men hiding from military service, biker gangs, and cult leaders, all while trying to figure out how to pitch film projects acceptable to the country’s propaganda-oriented television networks. The result is a crazy quilt of Russians’ self-delusion and lawless ambition, sort of an extreme parody of globalist capitalism harnessed for aggrandizement of Putin and his cronies. The average Russian cannot help but be complicit in the system, Pomerantsev concludes, because there are no alternatives. “This isn’t a country in transition but some sort of postmodern dictatorship that uses the language and institutions of democratic capitalism for authoritarian ends,” he insists, and state-controlled television is one of the keys (42). “The Kremlin has finally mastered the art of fusing reality TV and authoritarianism to keep the great, 140-million-strong population entertained, distracted, constantly exposed to geopolitical nightmares, which if repeated enough times can become infectious” (231). Hence the need for Putin’s February 2022 “special military action” to protect the Russian people from Ukraine’s alleged fascism and genocide. Still, Pomerantsev does cite the ways some Russians see through these illusions, even if there’s not much they can do about it. “Everyone who grew up in the Soviet Union had a moment when they woke up,” he writes about his mother and her generation. “As she began to look at the world around her, she slowly saw how everyone was pretending, was faking belief, was being one thing in the morning and another in the afternoon. But scared, too” (198).