Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life
By Leon Aron
St. Martin's, 934 pp., $ 35

Review excerpt:

Yeltsin himself has published several ghostwritten pleas in his own defense, and there are Russian journalists who form a claque to give him the benefit of the doubt. Leon Aron is the first to come up with a full-throated oratorio of praise. For him, Yeltsin was faultless, a great man who did no wrong; but if in fact he did do wrong, then it was right; and if it wasn't right, then he had no other choice. Instinctively sound, he rose to every occasion.