What's Cooking in the Kremlin: From Rasputin to Putin, How Russia Built an Empire with a Knife and Fork

A New York Times Editors’ Choice“Entertaining . . . A heady mix of propaganda and paranoia . . . [Szabłowski writes] sensitively . . . not just about food but also its terrible absence.” —The New York Times Book Review“Riveting—a delicious odyssey full of history, humor, and jaw-dropping stories. If you want to understand the making of modern Russia, read this book.” —Daniel Stone, bestselling author of The Food ExplorerA high-spirited, eye-opening, appetite-whetting culinary travel adventure that tells the story of the last hundred years of Russian power through food, by an award-winning Polish journalist who’s been praised by both Timothy Snyder and Bill BufordIn the gonzo spirit of Anthony Bourdain and Hunter S. Thompson, Witold Szabłowski has tracked down—and broken bread with—people whose stories of working in Kremlin kitchens impart a surprising flavor to our understanding of one of the world’s superpowers.In revealing what Tsar Nicholas II’s and Lenin’s favorite meals were, why