Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book
Review: Both me and my wife had read this book, and we both agree that this is by far the best account of life in Russia in the 1990s. The book is so interesting and so well written it is impossible to put it aside once you start reading it. It coveres wide range of topics from politics/corruption to the evolution of moscow drug scene. I lived in Moscow and later studied many of the same events in university, so I know that what the authors are telling is pretty much what happened. It was fascinating to read about the expat community and the way foreign journalists worked in Russia. It explains many of the articles I read in LA times! To answer question of the previous reviewer, the reason why both authors spend some time describing their own lives, is so that you can understand what drove them to Russia. It is very important to understand the huge difference between the mentality of Russians and most Westerners. Also, be prepared that this book is far from being politically correct. If you're a woman, most likely you will be offended by some of the passages. There are some extremely sexist things in this book. However, I think one should study them because they
reflect the untold feelings of many men.
Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Free T-Shirt Review
Review: Brutal, dark, sickening, funny... and usually correct. Ames and Taibbi will take you on a personal tour of better-than-fiction shenanigans, crimes, and follies that typify today's catastrophic Russia. Better writing of Russia's darker side doesn't exist. Although set in ultra decadent Moscow, this book is written for anyone with a gripe against those totally accepted cultural norms we in the West come to question only after leaving the country. Be ready to challenge our great pillar institutions of sex (or sexlessness), drugs (as in "war on"), government aid, and of course feminism. As a bonus, you will be swept into their petty feuds with rivals from all walks of life. Keep a copy in your toilet. Every page is a ker-plunk of one-sided dialogue with counter-culture at it's finest!
Rating: 
Summary: Taibbi = interesting, Ames = boring
Review: I don't know how appropriate it is to judge this book as a whole when the authors have decided to each write about half the chapters and both have wildly divergent styles. Taibbi is a fairly polished journalist and his chapters focus on Russian life and scandal that has been ignored by the mainstream press. His writing is focused and funny and - after reading the chapter titled "hacks" - I doubt I will ever be able to unquestioningly read another Russian news story written by a Western journalist. For his chapters, it seems Ames has decided to rewrite and repackage his journal entries and makes the common mistake believing his life is interesting for his readers. Thus we get to hear all about his scabies, the girls he's slept with, the speed he does, his fights with his stepfather over wanting to borrow the car (for all his attempts to distance himself from all things American he sounds remarkably like a typical suburban teenager - the kind who dresses in black and sits inside writing bad poetry all day), it's all unforgivably boring. Some of his Exile columns have been reprinted in this book, but after a while they became so redundant that I stopped reading them. Ames claims his chapters were written while he was on speed - it's obvious. He rambles, repeats himself and writes with all the continuity of, well, someone on speed. Perhaps his other Exile columns are more interesting, but for someone approaching 40, you'd think he'd be a little more polished. Ultimately, as Taibbi himself points out, the appeal of the Exile is its mix of serious journalism/criticism and it's stubborn refusal to censor itself, but for a full length book there probably should have been more thought put into it. Final rating: Ames written chapters = *; Taibbi written chapters = ****.
Rating:
Summary: Not For Middlebrows
Review: I never write reviews of books but this one deserves it after all the middlebrows have come out to attack it lately (first reviews were all glowing, later reviews all horrified). It's always a sign of a great book and courageous author (or authors in this case) when you have people either loving or hating a book, as they do this one. These days journalists and academics are all looking like Eddie Bauer catalogue models, and trying to live those safe lives. That's probably why some people hate this book, in which the authors/journalists get into the filth of corrupt Russia and corrupt journalism and don't try to make themselves out to be decent regular fellas but rather tell it like it is. Not for the faint-of-heart... If your idea of courageous intellectual pursuit is proving that Satan doesn't exist or that we live in a world where everyone respects each other, stay away from The Exile. If you want to read journalism as it should be done, diving head-first into the filth in order to get closer to the truth (like Dostoevsky taught), then take a chance. I know more than a few aspiring journalists and writers who said that this book changed their lives. Ok, most were male, but males have rights too!
Rating:
Summary: The Truth Will Blow You Away
Review: I was there--Moscow in the nineties. There was never anything like it and there never will be again. This is the only book that tells the raw, chaotic truth about the place. Ames and Taibbi are the funniest, bravest writers going at the moment. If you were among the lucky ones who experienced Moscow before Putin, get this book for the memories. If you weren't there, get it to learn about the wildest place and time since...since EVER. And take it from me: they're telling it straight. That's why the people Ames and Taibbi call "the Beigeocracy" are so mad at them. The truth is bloody hilarious.
Rating: 
Summary: Funny, but not worth buying
Review: Mssrs. Ames, Taibbi and Limonov are sometimes quite funny, and sometimes quite insightful. But the Exile is a bit of a one-trick pony, and after awhile it's a bit like a broken record (sorry for the mixed metaphors). You can read the website a few times a get the Ames/Taibbi/Limonov worldview for free.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Pants-splittingly funny... Ames is a whiny, infuriating misanthrope who happens to be really, really funny. People who voted for Bush, content suburbanites, and feminists will loathe this book equally. The eXile web site remains the only thing worth reading on the web.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Pants-splittingly funny... Ames is a whiny, infuriating misanthrope who happens to be really, really funny. People who voted for Bush, content suburbanites, and feminists will loathe this book equally. The eXile web site remains the only thing worth reading on the web.
Rating:
Summary: a rough gem in muddy flow
Review: Perhaps one of the reasons (in a sort of cause- and-effect logical warp) that this book should have been written is some excerpts of its reviews on its own back cover: "Brazen, irreverent ... the eXile struggles with the harsh truth of the new century Russia" (CNN), "...welcome to the life on capitalism's new frontier..." (Newsweek). One can't get much blah-blahnder than that - seemingly playing along the book's irreverence and channeling it into safe acceptable notions. Following any standards is not what authors had in mind. Among their goals - if any - they proclaim "... is protecting Russia from going the way of Prague. From becoming a domesticated, obedient member of the Global Village". One of the more astute observations in "The Exile" is about Moscow numerous "expats" community, for which the authors readily have inexhaustible amount of scorn and derision. By the early '90-s there wasn't a shortage of Westerners, particularly Americans, plodding Moscow streets. Romantic idealists, careerists wishing to nail a fashionable piece of "emerging markets" on their resumes, fly-by-night sleazebags and crooks, hopeless losers of various sorts trying to make it "on the new frontier" and then running back, tail between the legs, and writing ridiculous "revelations" like "Moscow Madness". One of the most conspicuous crowds were the hordes of Western young MBA consultants and advisers, the likes of what is known as "Andersen androids" and similar telling nicknames. It was a peculiar bunch. They mostly stuffed "...publicly funded businesses and organizations that were guaranteed profits, independent of any competition or accountability of performance, while supposedly furthering the capitalist values of competition and fair play... Looking at their bright, happy faces, you'd never guess that these were the people who'd have the balls to tell millions of Russians that their jobs and benefits needed to be sacrificed for the sake of 'competitiveness'." The book goes a long way to explain why reports of western correspondents from Russia often feel like stale bottled water taken from the same puddle, chlorinated and carbonated and slapped with a familiar label. In short - because mostly these expat reporters are indeed a closeted inward-looking insipid crowd, less interested in understanding and accepting a new country than in fitting and truncating new reality to familiar forms - and making a career out of it. Ironically, the "official" pedantic expatriate outlet "Moscow Times", hilariously scewered all over this book, came out with not one, but two reviews, both patiently explaining why "The Exile", while so blah-blah irreverent and provocative, is not such a big deal and perhaps should not be taken too seriously. "The Exile" unashamedly (and exploitively) revels in Moscow bursting sexuality, so missing in US, either from real city streets or from plastic-looking flesh and toothy smiles of innumerable "sexy" TV shows. Of course, the book is far from flawless. Some of author's pranks are sophomoric (but others are excellent), there are factual errors and some of its political insights are laughable. But to nitpick on the book for this is to completely miss its point. More likely the real bummer - they still don't get the word "dinamit`", as when one's party (repeatedly) skips a date - until one gets the point. The word originates from "dynamics", with at least a hint of a game - chase and rejection, rather than "dynamite" as in "blow up something". What a bunch of dopes. Despite enjoying this book as no else I've read recently, I won't give it full 5-star clip. That would smack of a kissassination job of the likes the authors so gloriously trashed in their book. But I'll keep reading "eXile" to feed on its visceral, shameless energy and mockery of things safe and proper.
Rating: 
Summary: carpetbaggers unite!
Review: The book is as much journalism, as a letter to Hustler Magazine. The authors condemn the colonialistic attitudes of the ex-pat community, while engaging in exactly the same exploitation of the local saps as the suit-clad All-American carpetbaggers they so despise. The authors' political rhetoric is shallow and hypocritical, and their claim to "real journalism" is laughable. This poorly written piece may only impress a Midwestern fratboy hoping to score in a poor Third World country on his first trip abroad.
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