Dou­glas Smith is an award-win­ning his­to­ri­an and trans­la­tor and the author of Rasputin and For­mer Peo­ple, which was a best­seller in the UK. His books have been trans­lat­ed into a dozen lan­guages. The recip­i­ent of a Guggen­heim Fel­low­ship, he has writ­ten for The New York Times and The Wall Street Jour­nal and has appeared in doc­u­men­taries by the BBC, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, and Net­flix. Before becom­ing a his­to­ri­an, he worked for the US State Depart­ment in the Sovi­et Union and as a Russ­ian affairs ana­lyst for Radio Free Europe/​Radio Lib­er­ty. He lives with his fam­i­ly in Seattle.