What would you write if you had complete editorial freedom in a foreign country plus a nearly unlimited amount of drugs and women willing to sleep with you? Each of these guys landed a book on my 2010 best-of list (Ames' Going Postal and Taibbi's The Great Derangement) because they're both great journalists who are also great writers, and this is their wildly entertaining retrospective of the muckraking magazine they ran for a decade in the middle of Russia's momentous transition away from Soviet communism towards almost unbelievably corrupt gangsterism. The fall of communism was life-changing for everyone who went though it; the collapse of order meant that Moscow went from stern showcase capital to near-anarchy extremely quickly, with plenty of fun to be had for the savvy American able to get in on the action. Ames' portions of the book tend to be more autobiographical, focusing on his own psychological motives for abandoning America to live in exile among the drug addicts and whores he found there, while Taibbi tends to focus on the unique aspects of reporting as an English language paper in a Russian-speaking country where the authorities were either completely indifferent or savagely hostile. It's hard not to be envious of their luck at being in such a unique time and place, and after reading this book, "wild and crazy guys" like Tucker Max will look like bland straight-edge douchebags to you. This is a book that should probably revolt you a little bit, but in a good way. ( )