Book Review: The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, by Masha Gessen.

I'm listening to the audiobook of "The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin," (2012) by Masha Gessen. While I am enjoying the intrigue of the late 80s Soviet Union and all the remarkable shifting of pieces and the uncertainty and the boiling over of frustration into rebellion, I find myself only able to listen to 20 minutes at a time of the book. I only now figured out why: It is because Vladimir Putin, now and certainly then, is an extraordinarily boring man. The story of his life is like this: He wants to do this thing and then he does this thing. He must talk to this person, so he talks to this person. His ambition is that of the cockroach: plodding along trying to get some crumbs of bacon fallen to the floor. He is a man devoid of introspection. The effect of listening to an account of Putin's life is soporific: an effective identity for a KGB man and future dictator.