Mastering Twentieth-Century Russian History Book

This book had a number of problems, starting off in the glossary which identifies Ramadan as usually starting on November 16. The problem being that it's August as I read this book, and I'm aware that it is also Ramadan. I don't know if this was the mistake of a careless editor or the author who happened to be writing and researching at a time when Ramadan was falling in November, but it immediately cast a shadow of doubt on everything else I read. Not that reading this book was in anyway enjoyable. McCauley's book reads like the lecture notes of a student taking a class on Central Asia. There was little evidence of any thought for craft or organization beyond rough thematic paragraphs. He strung his facts together, sentence after sentence, with no transitions, connections, or explanations. An example, from his chapter "The Great Game" - "In 1992, the railway between Urumchi, Xinjiang and Almaty, Kazakhstan began operation. Many other border crossings have been opened since then. A major complaint of the Chinese is that Central Asian states engage in barter because of lack of hard currency." From railroads to international commerce in the blink of an eye. It was if McCauley had an incredibly inflexible word count he had to stay under and too many facts to relate. Though if that were the case, then why the publisher chose to pepper the margins of each page with important sentences from the page, I don't know. Their only function seems to be to push the book past 150 pages. The writing was not only unskilled, but occasionally in poor taste as well. He casually threw out references to things like drug use among leaders without any attempt to give supporting evidence or explain why this information was crucial to the topic at hand. I sometimes felt as if I were reading a tabloid's attempt at a serious article. I would like to believe that what I read was at least factually correct, but I can't help but think this book was a waste of time and money.