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My Wild Ride Through Chaos, Corruption, and Murder in Putin's Russia
by Jamison R. Firestone
An American lawyer's brilliant, propulsive story of witnessing and playing a part in the transformation of Russia under Yeltsin and Putin, a true tale of fascinating personalities, criminal intrigue, harrowing situations, audacious actions and international politics that combines Bill Browder's Red Notice with Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker.
Raised by his father, a multimillionaire conman and crack addict who owned Manhattan's most expensive brothel, twenty-four- year-old Jamison Firestone decided to change the channel. He graduated from law school in 1991 and sought his fortune in Gorbachev's USSR establishing Russia's first independent foreign law firm.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Jamison lived in the maelstrom that was Russia, defending himself and his clients from mafia attacks, dealing with corrupt police officers, having his law office raided by armed commandos, and once having to bug the offices of the Russian police.
Jamison was at the center of some of Russia's most important events. He employed Sergei Magnitsky who was murdered for uncovering the largest tax theft in Russian history and teamed up with Bill Browder and Alexei Navalny to expose his killers. Along the way he inadvertently taught Navalny to make videos exposing corruption and started a war with the Russian government over passage of the Magnitsky Acts which threatened to sanction Russia's most powerful people.
A real life story that reads like a spy novel, Rule of Lies goes deep inside contemporary Russia and events that have reshaped the globe. Darkly comic, sometimes horrifying and deeply moving, it is a chilling warning of what can happen when a nascent democracy succumbs to one man's corrupt iron rule, becoming not only an authoritarian nation but a profoundly criminal one—a true mafia state.
"Fascinating debut memoir...Readers will find this a valuable eyewitness account of large-scale malfeasance in Russia." —Publishers Weekly
"The blend of gripping personal memoir and Firestone's incisive ability to explain complicated legal, business, and economic concepts throughout will appeal to both real-life thriller fans and those interested in viewing Russia's evolution from the inside." —Booklist
"Jamison Firestone has written a tremendous book about a terrible tragedy. If you want to know how Putin ruined Russia and to understand why it matters, you should read Rule of Lies." —Oliver Bullough, bestselling author of Everybody Loves Our Dollars and Butler to the World
"Jamison Firestone took part in some of the most momentous battles against Putin's increasingly criminal rule. Rule of Lies is both a gripping tale of the immense personal bravery of those who refused to back down to Putin's hijacking of the Russian state⎯and an astonishing glimpse into a rollercoaster life. A real page-turner." —Catherine Belton, author of Putin's People
This information about Rule of Lies was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jamison Firestone established the first independent foreign law firm in Russia where he lived for eighteen years. He was a member of the board of Directors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia for the last six of those. He is a co-founder along with Sir William Browder of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign which created the Magnitsky human rights and anti-corruption sanctions regimes. He also ran the Navalny 35 campaign promoting the sanctioning of corrupt oligarchs and officials identified by Alexei Navalny. He currently works on seizing Russian state assets for the benefit of Ukraine and has been featured on the BBC, Bloomberg, CBC, and in several documentaries. He lives in London.
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