Midnight Diaries Book

Fascinating insight into the inner workings of a large, overly bureaucratic state machine. These are edited diary notes, written with the 'help' of members of his inner circle. With the benefit of hindsight (and person admiration), the decisions sometimes appear much too clear, as if a priori they were bound to result in positive consequences (or, the consequences that Yeltsin hoped for: these are not always one and the same). This cannot always be the case, and the events are surely written to convey a feeling of control and predictability, when much of it would have been happenstance. It is personal in tone, and you get a sense of the characters, machinations, and also regrets of a man with the weight of a quite literally massive nation on his shoulders.

...you would probably put him on your list of 'fantasy dinner party guests'. As long as you hid the vodka.