Putin Country by Anne Garrels

Last week, longtime NPR correspondent Anne Garrels was on Fresh Air to talk about her new book, Putin Country. Since 1993, Garrels has returned to the industrial city of Chelyabinsk every year to see how it and its people have fared since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Here is the Fresh Air interview. Below is a retrospective of Garrels career. There are lots of cool vintage photos of the Soviet Union and Soviet cars. Sadly, Garrels and her husband are both battling cancer.

And coincidentally, Chelyabinsk was where that huge daytime meteor was spotted a few years ago.