This journey into the Russian countryside heads right for the heart of the Russian character. In this extraordinary work of reportage Mark Kramer gives us the most intimate portrait we have yet had of a people who have been hidden from us for most of a century. His story begins in the waning days of Communism, as Gorbachev shines the spotlight of perestroika on the failing empire's moribund collective-farm system.

Kramer, on an assignment for the New York Times Magazine, sets out to discover why a nation blessed with an eleven-time-zone stretch of fertile land still suffers from shortages and rationing. Travels with a Hungry Bear chronicles the ungainly struggle of the Soviet nation to feed itself.

1. From 1987 to 1993, in successive journeys, Kramer revisits many of the same places and characters, from ministry officials to tractor drivers. Through them we come to understand the flawed system poignantly playing itself out. Kramer has provided a unique account of a nation self-destructing, then facing the grim task of remaking itself.

Along the way we encounter the cruelties, absurdities, and waste visited upon rural life. We share in the sad, comical, and heroic moments of resourceful individuals caught in this grand web of inefficiencies. As Party rule tumbles, we experience the retreat of some Russians into imagined prior glory, and the hopes of others who strive to reinvent Russia.