Ambassador Michael McFaul served on President Obama’s National Security Council and then as U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation. He’s now a professor of political science at Stanford University and a senior fellow at its Hoover Institution. His newest book From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia came out last month. I chatted over email with McFaul and asked him some questions on Russia, his new book and what the president should be reading.

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