| Presidents -- Ukraine -- Biography. |
| Russian Invasion of Ukraine, 2022 |
| Ukraine -- Politics and government -- 2014- |
| Ukraine -- History -- 2014- |
| Ukraine -- Foreign relations -- 2014- |
| Zelensky, Volodymyr, 1978- |
| Zełenski, Wołodymyr, 1978- |
| Zelenskiĭ, Vladimir Aleksandrovich, 1978- |
| Zelenskiy, Vladimir, 1978- |
| Zelenskiy, Volodymyr, 1978- |
| Zelensʹkyĭ, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych, 1978- |
| Zelenskyy, Volodymyr, 1978- |
| Зеленский, Владимир, 1978- |
| Зеленский, Владимир Александрович, 1978- |
| Зеленський, Володимир, 1978- |
| Зеленський, Володимир Олександрович, 1978- |
| Presidency |
| Operation Z, Ukraine, 2022 |
| Special Military Operation, Ukraine, 2022 |
| Ukraine -- History -- Russian Invasion, 2022 |
| Z, Operation, Ukraine, 2022 |
Available:
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Searching... Fall River Main | B Z49 | LOBBY | Searching... Unknown |
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Searching... Bridgewater Public Library | 947.7 SHUSTER 2024 | NEW NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
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Searching... Dartmouth - Southworth | B ZELENSKY ZEN 2024 | NEW BIOGRAPHY | Searching... Unknown |
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Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library | 947.7086 SHUSTER | NEW NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Hanson Public Library | B ZELENSKY | BIOGRAPHY | Searching... Unknown |
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Bound With These Titles
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Summary
Summary
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
"Shuster crafts an intimate account of the Russian invasion, which vividly captures Zelensky's transformation from a clean-cut funnyman into a war hero out of central casting." --New York Times Book Review; Editors' Choice Selection
"The Showman surpasses all similar efforts to date and is set to be the standard by which all other works on Mr. Zelensky and Ukraine's wartime politics will be judged." --Wall Street Journal
A monumental account of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the forging of a leader, The Showman provides an insider's perspective on the war reshaping our world, based on unprecedented access to Volodymyr Zelensky and the high command in Kyiv.
Time correspondent Simon Shuster chronicles the life and leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky from the dressing rooms of his variety shows to the muddy trenches of Ukraine's war with Russia. Based on four years of reporting; extensive travels with President Zelensky to the front; and dozens of interviews with him, his wife, his friends and enemies, his advisers, ministers and military commanders, Shuster tells the intimate and revealing story of the president's evolution from a slapstick actor to a symbol of resilience.
In their most candid accounts of the war so far, members of Zelensky's inner circle show how the president's character changed under the strains of leadership and the horrors he witnessed each day. His wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska, describes her escape from Kyiv with their children, her life on the run, and the tensions that emerged in her marriage as she struggled to return to a meaningful role in the administration. Ukraine's top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, shares the untold story of his fraught relationship with the president and the subsequent consequences.
Reflecting on their own regrets and critical decisions, Zelensky and his senior aides open up about the causes of the Russian invasion and how it may have been avoided. They describe with astonishing frankness how their peace talks with Vladimir Putin fell apart and how their faith in the U.S. faltered, both under Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
The Showman provides the first inside account of Zelensky's life amid the invasion, offering a clear-eyed view of his failures to prepare for it and his willingness to silence dissent under martial law. What emerges is a complex picture of a man struggling to break what he sees as a historical cycle of oppression that began generations before he was born. Even as the war drags on, Zelensky lays out his vision for its future course and, through his actions, demonstrates his strategy for countering the Russians and keeping the West on his side.
The Showman, as a work of eyewitness journalism, provides an essential perspective on the war defining our age, resulting in a riveting, vivid portrait of the invasion as experienced by its number one target and improbable hero.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Time magazine correspondent Shuster debuts with an up-close account of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky's transformation from comedian and political satirist to steadfast wartime leader and world symbol of "fortitude." Drawing on unprecedented access to Zelensky as well as interviews with the president's friends, advisers, ministers, staff members, and wife Olena, Shuster tracks how the celebrity actor went from "naive charmer preparing to enter a world of cynics, oligarchs and thugs who took him for an easy mark" to "stubborn, confident, vengeful, impolitic" leader of a beleaguered nation. In addition to chronicling Zelensky's successful bid for the presidency in 2019 and his first days in office, when he "showed a painful sensitivity to criticism," Shuster describes how the former TV star, driven by "professional" instincts from the start of the Russian invasion, made highly publicized appearances--including at South Korea's parliament, the World Bank, and the Grammy Awards--with the goal of winning over Western leaders and securing weapons. Soon "it turned into a political rite of passage" for European heads of state to travel to Kyiv and pose for a selfie with Zelensky. The president's critics will note Shuster downplays accusations of his subject's "high-handedness," though he does discuss Zelensky's crackdowns on the Ukrainian press. This is a crisp snapshot of a national leader under fire. (Jan.)
Guardian Review
Real life is, of course, never as tidy or satisfying as fiction. The good guys don't necessarily finish first, the villains don't always get their just deserts, and the gutsy little character who no one thought would achieve anything doesn't end up the winner merely because we want him to. Volodymyr Zelenskiy would make a tremendous hero in an undemanding Hollywood movie along the lines of Independence Day: Mr Ordinary Saves the Nation. If Russia's ugly, wholly unnecessary war against Ukraine were something out of a blockbuster, the eighth reel would see Crimea falling to Ukraine's victorious armed forces, Putin being chased out of office by a democratic uprising, and Zelenskiy going back to being a television comedy star, with his wife and children standing in the darkness behind the studio cameras, watching in loving admiration. That last bit could still happen, but probably not the rest of it. Ukraine's counteroffensive has come to nothing, Russia's huge manpower advantages are starting to tell, Putin has faced down the only challenge to his power, and Zelenskiy is touring the world like Haile Selassie in the 1930s, appealing for help from countries that increasingly have other things to think about. Far from watching good triumph over evil, we'll see a sordid negotiation over which bits of territory, stolen from a sovereign nation, Russia can keep hold of; while Donald Trump, re-elected, does one of his trademark deals in which he surrenders his best card in exchange for promises that, as happened with North Korea and Afghanistan, the other side doesn't keep. This, rather than a heart-warming Hollywood ending, seems most likely now. And in Kyiv, the political opponents who've had to keep quiet ever since the Russian invasion are now starting to criticise Zelenskiy in increasingly sharp terms. The ethos of the superhero movie is giving way to the greyness of ordinary life. But we mustn't forget how well Zelenskiy has played his part. Genuinely normal and decent and without pretension, he has never forgotten where he came from: TV comedy and soap opera. When Simon Shuster calls this definitive, thoroughly researched and deeply insightful biography The Showman, he is exactly right. As a professional actor, Zelenskiy always seems to be asking himself, "What would a real leader do in my position?" It makes him a real human being - a mensch. I've met and interviewed something like 200 presidents, prime ministers and other assorted leaders, but I've only really liked three of them: Nelson Mandela, Václav Havel and Zelenskiy. In person, Zelenskiy is as warm, emotional and genuine as the other two. There's no imperiousness, no pride of office, no standing on dignity. He treats you as an equal, and when you ask him sharp questions he doesn't retreat into irritability or try to dodge them. If it's an act, it's something he's made his own. The Showman is a far more intimate and much better informed biography than most politicians get from journalists. Shuster is an honest and frank biographer, thoroughly equipped for the job. He was born in Moscow, the son of a Ukrainian father who had grown up near Zelenskiy's home town, and a Russian mother. In 1989 they fled to the US, where Shuster grew up and became a staff writer for Time magazine. In 2014, when Putin's men seized Crimea, Shuster was the first foreign journalist to get there and start reporting. He met and interviewed Zelenskiy during the presidential campaign of 2019, and after Zelenskiy was elected he spent months embedded with the presidential team: the kind of access most foreign correspondents can only dream of. This relationship, of course, often makes reporters go soft. In order to keep the enviable position of trust they find themselves pumping out the kind of thing that their hosts want to hear. It says a great deal for Shuster, and for Zelenskiy and his team, that this hasn't happened. Anyone who wants to know what Zelenskiy and his administration are doing and thinking reads Time, and this is thanks to Shuster. Even before Putin's flacks started yelling that Ukraine was neo-Nazi on Russian television, Shuster was writing about the Hitlerian proclivities of the Azov Brigade. He wrote bitingly of the corruption that has been endemic inpost-Soviet Ukraine, and he was completely honest about the way Zelenskiy flirted with the thought of suppressing political opposition. Yet the president's men and women continue to trust him. Shuster is particularly good in describing Zelenskiy's courage in staying put in Kyiv with his family on the morning the Russian army invaded. That ensured the failure of the initial assault. Ever since, it's been a slogging match between Russian numbers, Nato weaponry and Ukrainian stubbornness; and as Trump's shadow has grown and US Republicans have chosen to ignore the threat that Putin poses, the balance of the war has shifted against Ukraine. As a result, Zelenskiy's political position is weaker. If, like some showbiz Cincinnatus, he returns to his farm, or maybe to some new television series, he'll thoroughly deserve the honours that will be showered on him. And presumably he'll remain the ingenu he's always been. One of the most arresting passages in this insightful book comes when Shuster quotes an interview Zelenskiy gave to a German reporter immediately after he had seen some appalling photographs of dead Ukrainian civilians. A few days before, Zelenskiy had visited the dormitory town of Bucha, outside Kyiv, which had been captured by Putin's men at the start of the invasion; they had executed the inhabitants at random and tortured dozens in the most bestial fashion. And yet, in his interview, Zelenskiy didn't express any hatred towards Putin himself. "It was," Shutter writes, "as though Zelensky was still clinging to the illusion he had brought with him to the presidency. He seemed to believe that if he could only take Putin on a tour of Bucha, if he could bring him to the edge of that pit in the churchyard and let him peer down at the bodies, the war might stop. 'I don't think we have any other choice,' he said. 'Even though we're fighting very hard, I don't see any option, other than to sit with him at the negotiating table, and to talk.'" Sadly, that's naive. When this war ends, the result will be an angry, armed peace. Russia will hang on to most of the land it has seized, and Putin will be able to use its Ukrainian territories to stir up trouble against Kyiv whenever he needs to. The idea that he can be made to confront the horrors he has unleashed, and that this will change him, is pure sentimentality. And Zelenskiy? He doesn't need fame and admiration, because he had plenty of that before he stood for the presidency, and he'll keep it for the rest of his life. He tells Shuster it's his life's work to get Ukraine out from Russia's imperial shadow, and in that he has surely succeeded: eventual membership of the EU and Nato will entrench that. But the price has been shocking and savage - and though the good guys won't have lost, they certainly won't have triumphed.
Kirkus Review
A veteran Kyiv-based correspondent for Time offers a nuanced portrait of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. "Show no mercy. Use all available weapons to wipe out every Russian thing that's there." So said Zelensky at the beginning of Russia's invasion of his country, referring to Russian troops threatening to seize his capital's airport. The Ukrainian military obliged, but those around Zelensky were surprised by the ferocity of his response; by Shuster's account, the former comedian had become a steely leader overnight. He'd entered office under something of a cloud: Having promised not to take up residence in the president's opulent quarters (but then doing just that), he aroused the anger of the political opposition and the press. The war soon followed, and it changed him. As Shuster writes, he "turned into a wartime president unique to our age of instant information," one aspect of which was to keep his own counsel and rely less on his aides. That said, the author depicts Zelensky as somewhat of a naif. He had hoped, for example, that their shared background in show business would make Donald Trump more sympathetic to Ukraine's cause, even as Trump proved himself to be a Putin cheerleader, particularly after cutting off funds when Zelensky sidelined his call for a probe into the Biden family. He also angered Joe Biden and other world leaders by his strident demands for more and more aid. Sensitive to criticism and, at one point, angry himself that world events seemed to have placed his nation in the middle of a power struggle between "these empires, the United States, Russia, China," Zelensky has nonetheless clearly risen to the occasion--and, Shuster hopes, he will remain a resolute leader and guide his nation to victory. A useful key for understanding a politician and tactician much in the news but little known. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In his first book, veteran Time foreign correspondent Shuster reports on the intrepid president of Ukraine during a time of crisis and war. Drawing on extensive interviews with Volodymyr Zelensky, his entourage and family, and other leaders in Ukraine, Shuster provides a strategic overview of Russia's invasion and a biographical survey of the actor and comedian turned politician. In-depth analysis of politics, foreign relations, and military affairs in Ukraine is interspersed with details about Zelensky's life and career in show business before becoming the personification of Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression. Shuster makes comparisons between Zelensky's leadership and the failure of the former president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, who fled when the Taliban took over, and discusses the prospects for continuing U.S. support of Ukraine. Hardly a hagiography, Shuster's book shows the human side of Zelensky as he struggles with domestic complexities and controversial handling of the opposition to present a balanced view. The Showman is an important work as one of the first fully researched, book-length chronicles of the ongoing war in Ukraine.