I’m currently reading The Oligarchs, a truly fascinating book about the six everyday Soviet citizens who bought up Russia during the period of privatization and came to rule the country from behind the scenes. It’s very good, very detailed, and told smoothly like a story. The most fascinating part about it is not so much what these men did, but how they did it — and the author starts from the beginning, going from the mid-’80s through the late-’90s — involving exactly how they built their empires in a legally deficit environment where everything goes. Check it out.