The Bunker Selfie
Paperback · Hardcover
Ships in 2 to 5 working days. Delivery quoted from your address at checkout.
Read the opening free
5,545 words · no email, no account
No. 028 · Power & Politics · World Politics
The Vertical
a biography of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
What the book is
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?
At a glance
- Subject
- Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
- Shelf
- Power & Politics · World Politics
- Written by
- Stepan Yegorov
- Chapters
- 21 across 344 pages
- Narrated by
- Alden Mercer
- Editions
- Paperback · Hardcover · EPUB · Audiobook
- Authorisation
- Unauthorised — no subject, estate or label had approval over the text.
Contents · 21 chapters
- 01The Siege CityRead free
- 02The Courtyard3,897 words
- 03The Sword and Shield3,981 words
- 04Dresden4,978 words
- 05The Return4,319 words
- 06The Moscow Transfer6,068 words
- 07The Chosen One5,341 words
- 08The Chechen Hammer6,838 words
- 09Vertical of Power4,311 words
- 10The Siloviki State3,546 words
- 11The Near Abroad5,260 words
- 12Crimea4,970 words
- 13The Hybrid War5,247 words
- 14The Poisoner3,919 words
- 15The Decision6,009 words
- 16The War6,227 words
- 17The Isolation6,622 words
- 18The Vertical4,578 words
- 19The Brand2,492 words
- 20The Global Game3,825 words
- 21The Private Man4,662 words
The opening chapter is published in full — read it here.
Editions
- 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
Questions
01Who 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.
02Is 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.
03Can 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.
04How long is it?
About 102,000 words, 21 chapters, 344 pages in the paperback.
05What 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.
