Alexander Blakely

A fantastic little memoir and a lesson in economic models. Alexander Blakely with his degree in economics moves from the US to Siberia in 1992. He spent four years there living among her people and observing what happened up close after the fall of communism and rampant capitalism and consumerism took hold. He had a bird's eye view of what happened in Russia during this brief period when the walls came down and right before the globablization of the Internet.

The book is entertaining and Blakely has some spot on observations about the good and bad in free markets and the tradeoffs between comfort and happiness. At the end of the book which published in 2002 Blakely gives an update on his friends. Now, I would really love to have a sequel from a decade on.

You will like this book if you like:
*memoirs
*travel
*business and economic theory
*enjoy oral histories
*read Russian literature… (mehr)