The Man Without A Face; The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin has been an intriguing figure for me.  I've seen pictures of him swimming down the river, piloting a flock of endangered birds in an ultralight plane, bring up precious (planted) vases from under the sea and riding horseback without a shirt.  His press releases are almost comically manly.  So I decided to read about him in a book Without a Face, The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen.  Was it dry you ask?  Dry as Melba toast but sometimes Melba toast is just what I like.  Putin was a bad boy.  His temper was uncontrollable and he had to be physically pulled off other boys in school.  He was a terrible student in part because of the fights and in part he didn't care about pleasing his instructors.  He was selfish and a poor communicator.  His wife was sure he was breaking up with her during all but the last sentence of his marriage proposal.  As a high school student he went to the KGB and said he would be interested in working for them.  He was told you don't apply for the KGB - they will come to you.  Eventually they did come to him.  How did this emotionally repressed man get to be the leader of Russia?  And  how does he keep the job for so long when he still has that uncontrollable temper?  Here is what he said when asked by a French reporter in 2002 about the use of heavy artillery against civilians in Chechnya:  "If you are ready to become a radical adherent of Islam and you are ready to be circumcised, I invite you to come to Moscow.  We are a country of many faiths.  We have specialists in this. I will recommend that the operation be performed in such a way that nothing will ever grow there again."  Say what!?  The interpreter could not, in decency, translate what he said in full.  The French press summarized his statement to "You are welcome and everything and everyone is tolerated in Russia."  After reading this book I no longer think of Putin as a comically manly figurehead.  Poisonings, bombings of civilian apartment buildings, killing of journalists on his birthday, tanks with guns pointed at the civilian hostages in a theater in Chechnya - no, now Putin is not so funny to me anymore.  Now he scares me.