Welcome to Litsy!

The bestselling author of Bringing Down the House (sixty-three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and the basis for the hit movie 21) and The Accidental Billionaires (the basis for the Academy Award�winning film The Social Network) delivers an epic drama of wealth, rivalry, and betrayal among mega-wealthy Russian oligarchs�and its international repercussions.Once Upon a Time in Russia is the untold true story of the larger-than-life billionaire oligarchs who surfed the waves of privatization to reap riches after the fall of the Soviet regime: �Godfather of the Kremlin� Boris Berezovsky, a former mathematician whose first entrepreneurial venture was running an automobile reselling business, and Roman Abramovich, his dashing young prot�g� who built a multi-billion-dollar empire of oil and aluminum. Locked in a complex, uniquely Russian partnership, Berezovsky and Abramovich battled their way through the �Wild East� of Russia with Berezovsky acting as the younger man�s krysha�literally, his roof, his protector. Written with the heart-stopping pacing of a thriller�but even more compelling because it is true�this story of amassing obscene wealth and power depicts a rarefied world seldom seen up close. Under Berezovsky�s krysha, Abramovich built one of Russia�s largest oil companies from the ground up and in exchange made cash deliveries�including 491 million dollars in just one year. But their relationship frayed when Berezovsky attacked President Vladimir Putin in the media�and had to flee to the UK. Abramovich continued to prosper. Dead bodies trailed Berezovsky�s footsteps, and threats followed him to London, where an associate of his died painfully and famously of Polonium poisoning. Then Berezovsky himself was later found dead, declared a suicide. Exclusively sourced, capturing a momentous period in recent world history, Once Upon a Time in Russia is at once personal and political, offering an unprecedented look into the wealth, corruption, and power behind what Graydon Carter called �the story of our age.� (less)

The bestselling author of Bringing Down the House (sixty-three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and the basis for the hit movie 21) and The Accidental Billionaires (the basis for the Academy Award�winning film The Social (…more)