Paperback edition of the bestselling history of the Soviet Union, which concentrates on the heady years of the late 1950s, when the Soviet dream appeared to be working. It's about a moment in history when the Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. 'Francis Spufford evokes the chaos with boundless comic sympathy and a piercing eye for historic detail.' Clive James