Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. By Michael McFaul. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. 384p. $35.00. The Russian Parliament: Institutional Evolution in a Transitional Regime, 1989–1999. By Thomas F. Remington. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. 288p. $40.00

Each of these books is, in its own way, a tour de force; each provides the best book-length account and analysis available to date on its subject. Michael McFaul's book offers a major contribution to thinking on regime change in general, as well as a fine account and analysis of Russia's transition from Sovietism. Thomas Remington's book, which investigates the nascence and internal operation of the Russian legislature, powerfully advances our understanding of the Russian parliament and the formation of political institutions more generally. Both books are scholarly and sophisticated, but each is also elegantly written, well organized, and accessible to the nonspecialist. Both authors were present at the creation of the new Russian political order, and each book is deeply informed by extensive interviews and first-hand observation.