The Showman

Simon Shuster has reported from Russia and Ukraine for 17 years, most of that time as a staff writer for Time Magazine. His coverage of the war began in 2014, when he was the first foreign journalist to arrive in Crimea as Russian troops took over the peninsula. In 2019, he met and interviewed Volodymyr Zelensky for a profile of his presidential campaign, then continued covering his administration in the years that followed, first traveling to the war zone with the President in April 2021, as the Russians gathered their armies at the border. When the full-scale invasion began the following year, Simon spent months embedded with the President's team, securing unparalleled access to their compound in Kyiv, where he wrote The Showman, his first book.

"The Showman surpasses all similar efforts to date and is set to be the standard by which all other works on Mr. Zelensky and Ukraine's wartime politics will be judged." - Wall Street Journal

"Using interviews with the Ukrainian president, his closest associates and his critics, Shuster crafts an intimate account of the Russian invasion, which vividly captures Zelensky's transformation from a clean-cut funnyman into a war hero out of central casting." - New York Times Book Review

"In this cinematic page-turner, Time correspondent Simon Shuster paints a vivid portrait of the Ukrainian president . . . Deeply reported and deftly written, this book is a feat not only because it sheds light on one of today's most consequential political figures, but also the history that shaped him and the tectonic shift in geopolitics that he's now forced to navigate." - NPR.org

"[A]uthoritative and engaging . . . [Shuster] writes with clarity and immediacy about matters that could easily descend into centuries of history and reams of military strategy. The Showman has plenty of both, but always in the service of a tight narrative that deftly toggles from past to present and back again. . . . Shuster does readers the ultimate service. He makes them feel smart. . . . The Showman is first-rate long-form journalism." - San Francisco Chronicle

"[A] definitive, thoroughly researched and deeply insightful biography . . . The Showman is a far more intimate and much better informed biography than most politicians get from journalists. Shuster is an honest and frank biographer, thoroughly equipped for the job." - The Guardian

"[An] intimate biography . . . [A] brilliant piece of extended reportage." - London Times