Via Crooked Timber a review by Matt Taibbi of Thomas Freidman’s new book. Excellent stuff.

(One of the slightly odd things about life is that Matt started out in Moscow, writing The eXile and its predecessor, whose name I’ve forgotten. Not only did they invent the phrase flathead for the Mafiya types, they also once seriously considered me as their business editor. Sanity prevalied but it was a close run thing.)