This week marked the death, at age 76, of Russia’s first freely elected leader. Presiding over both reform and decline, inspiring both hope and disappointment, Yeltsin was a controversial figure in his lifetime, and the debate over his legacy will continue long past his death. Several recent Yale University Press books address the issues and topics that characterized Yeltsin’s era, including Thomas Remington’s The Russian Parliament: Institutional Evolution in a Transitional Regime, 1989-1999; Rodric Braithwaite’s Across the Moscow River: The World Turned Upside Down; Rose Brady’s Kapitalizm: Russia’s Struggle to Free Its Economy; and a brand-new book by Robert Daniels on The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia.