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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Old Fezziwig" data-source="post: 9222236" data-attributes="member: 59">Just finished Behind the Curtain by Jonathan Wilson. The book generally follows a course through Eastern Europe from west to east, starting in Ukraine and ending in Russia, by way of the Balkans and the Caucasus (it also goes to Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania -- Moldova, the Baltics, and Belarus are skipped).  If you like football, it's worth reading, though as it moves east, it gets slightly repetitive.  I suspect that it'll shock no one that Georgian and Azerbaijani football at the turn of the millennium are ludicrously rife with corruption, in ways that are utterly lacking the insouciance of the corruption in Hungary or parts of the Balkans -- with the corruption in Russia itself cold and calculating. It's less polished than Inverting the Pyramid but still a charming read.</blockquote>