Murderers in Mausoleums: Riding the Back Roads of Empire Between Moscow and Beijing

A gripping journey through some of the planet’s most remote and challenging terrain and its peoples, in search of why democracy has yet to thrive in lands it seemed so recently ready to overtake Across the largest landmass on earth, in lands once conquered by Genghis Khan and exploited by ruthless Communist regimes, autocratic and dictatorial states are again arising, growing wealthy on petrodollars and low-cost manufacturing. More and more, they are challenging theWest. Media reports focus on developments in Moscow and Beijing, but the peoples inhabiting the vast expanses in between remain mostly unseen and unheard, their daily lives and aspirations scarcely better known to us now than they were in ColdWar days.Tayler finds, among many others, a dissident Cossack advocating mass beheadings, a Muslim in Kashgar calling on the United States to bomb Beijing, and Chinese youths in Urumqi desiring nothing more than sex, booze, and rock ’n’ roll—all while confronting over and over again the contradiction of people who value liberty and the free market but idealize tyrants who oppose both. From the steppes of southern Russia to the conflict-ridden Caucasus Mountains to the deserts of central Asia and northern China,Tayler shows that our maps have gone blank at the worst possible time.

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