"Based on four years of reporting; extensive travels with President Zelensky to the front; and dozens of interviews with him, his wife, his friends and enemies, his advisers, ministers and military commanders, 'The Showman' tells an intimate and eye-opening story of the President's evolution from a slapstick actor to a symbol of resilience, revealing how he managed to rally the world's democracies behind his cause. Clear-eyed about the President's early failures as a peacemaker and his willingness to silence political dissent, the book offers a complex picture of a man struggling to break what he sees as a historical cycle of oppression that began generations before he was born. Even as the war drags on, Zelensky lays out his vision for its furure course and, through his actions, demonstratioes his strategy for countering the Russians and keeping the West on his side. The result is a riveting, up-close picture of the invasion as experiences by its number-one target and improbable hero."-- Taken from dust jacket.