# The Vertical *A Biography of Putin* — Legendary Biographies No. 028 - **Subject:** Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin - **Written by:** Stepan Yegorov - **Shelf:** Power & Politics / World Politics - **Published:** 2025 - **Extent:** 344 pages, 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink - **Paperback:** $19.99 — 6 × 9 in · 344 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback (ISBN 979-8-90470-003-4) - **Hardcover:** $24.99 — 6 × 9 in · 344 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · case laminate on the same text block (ISBN 979-8-90470-013-3) - **EPUB:** $3.99 — EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books (ISBN 979-8-90470-002-7) - **Audiobook:** $5.99 — Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Alden Mercer (ISBN 979-8-90470-004-1) Buy it, or read the opening free: volumes/028-the-vertical.html ## About this book A boy chases rats down the stairwell of a communal apartment in Leningrad, learning early that the corridor belongs to whoever moves first. Decades later, the same instinct reshapes a continent. Stepan Yegorov traces the life of Vladimir Putin from the postwar courtyards of his childhood, through the gray office in Dresden where he watched the East German state dissolve into paper and ash, to the Kremlin corridors of a leader who would outlast four American presidents and order the largest European war since 1945. Yegorov follows him into the rooms where decisions hardened into doctrine, and into the silences left by the journalists, defectors, and rivals who did not survive his ascent. Working across Russian, German, Ukrainian, Chinese, and English sources, Yegorov refuses the comfort of a single vantage. The Kremlin's account of itself is taken seriously, then set beside the testimony of those it has tried to erase. What emerges is neither apology nor caricature, but a portrait of a man and a system thinking in concert — a vertical of power built one loyalty, one threat, one funeral at a time. At its center is a question the twenty-first century has not yet answered: how does a private grievance become a national project, and what does the world owe the people caught beneath it? ## Contents 1. The Siege City 2. The Courtyard 3. The Sword and Shield 4. Dresden 5. The Return 6. The Moscow Transfer 7. The Chosen One 8. The Chechen Hammer 9. Vertical of Power 10. The Siloviki State 11. The Near Abroad 12. Crimea 13. The Hybrid War 14. The Poisoner 15. The Decision 16. The War 17. The Isolation 18. The Vertical 19. The Brand 20. The Global Game 21. The Private Man ## Questions **Who is The Vertical about?** Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Vertical — and the name goes on the line underneath. **Is this an authorised biography?** No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented. **Can I read some of it before buying?** Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 5,545 words of the book. **How long is it?** About 102,000 words, 21 chapters, 344 pages in the paperback. **What is the printed book like?** 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf. ## The writer Stepan Yegorov is a former Vedomosti and Novaya Gazeta journalist who left Russia in 2015. Over two decades in newsrooms, he documented the shifting political landscape of Moscow, building a deep network of contacts. His biographies cover Russian and Soviet political figures with the kind of access that emigration sometimes paradoxically opens. His research relies on archival discoveries and interviews with exiled officials. By examining these personal histories, he connects the structural decisions of the past to modern political developments. His major work, The Vertical, offers a detailed look into these power dynamics. He now lives in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he translates historical documents and hikes in the regional forests.