The Brothers

The Road to an American Tragedy

By: Masha Gessen

Narrated by: Hillary Huber

An important story for our era: how the American dream went wrong for two immigrants and the nightmare that resulted.

On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston marathon, killing three people and wounding more than 264 others. In the ensuing manhunt, Tamerlan Tsarnaev died, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, was captured and ultimately charged on 30 federal counts. Yet long after the bombings and the terror they sowed, after all the testimony and debate, what we still haven't learned is why. Why did the American dream go so wrong for two immigrants? How did such a nightmare come to pass?

Acclaimed Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen is uniquely endowed with the background, access, and talents to tell the full story. An immigrant herself who came to the Boston area with her family as a teenager, she returned to the former Soviet Union in her early 20s and covered firsthand the transformations that were wracking her homeland and its neighboring regions. It is there that the history of the Tsarnaev brothers truly begins, as descendants of ethnic Chechens deported to Central Asia in the Stalin era. Gessen follows the family in their futile attempts to make a life for themselves in one war-torn locale after another and then, as new émigrés, in the looking-glass, utterly disorienting world of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Most crucially, she reconstructs the struggle between assimilation and alienation that ensued for each of the brothers, incubating a deadly sense of mission. And she traces how such a split in identity can fuel the metamorphosis into a new breed of homegrown terrorist, with feet on American soil but sense of self elsewhere.

©2015 Masha Gessen (P)2015 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

Named a Best Book of the Year by Time Magazine

"Remarkable...reminiscent of Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower.... Rather than the story of two lone-wolf jihadists, determined to wage war on their adopted country, the marathon bombing becomes a saga of both the Tsarnaev family and contemporary US culture, in which all too often terror provokes an unreasonable response.... For Gessen, the issue is not guilt or innocence...more essential is what the Tsarnaevs and their story tells us about who we have become. That she makes the case with grace and passion, while also basing it on rigorous reporting, is the triumph of the book." (Los Angeles Times)

"Straightforward and captivating." (Janet Napolitano, The New York Times Book Review)

"Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen’s passionate, opinionated, deeply reported exploration of the long road that led the Tsarnaev brothers to commit the Boston Marathon bombing. She traces the family’s history from Chechnya to a precarious Boston-area immigrant demi-monde, asking urgent questions and avoiding simple answers." (Time)

Good reporting

As always, Masha has done they’s research, though deeply and connected dots . Lots to think about.

If you DO care about why terrorism happens

This is a book for people seeking answers about why terrorism happens. The deep geographical, political, cultural, and political roots that lead to horrific events should matter to all of us, unless we want to keep bombing our way out of problems, which actually brings on more problems.

poor reporting, poorly organized

storytelling all over the place. seemingly unsupported conclusions. questionable sources. enjoyable nonetheless but not a serious examination of the subject material.

So much more than expected.

Masha Gessen continues to impress with her grasp of humanity, historical context, the importance of place, the legacy of ancestry, and political reality. The Brothers is stunning in scope yet she skillfully takes the reader into this difficult territory with fascinating detail, compassion, and knowledge of her subject. Masha Gessen is a gifted observer and writer and Hillary Huber's ability to voice the many characters brought clarity and audible excellence to this book. Bravo.

Wow! Great listen!

This audio book exceeded my expectations. The author delivers a wonderful narrative story that provides a history and context that I found thought provoking. She doesn't pretend to know the unknowable, and thus leaves the reader with a lot of questions to wonder about!

The narrator's voice, reading style and ability to deliver additional character voices in a subtle way made the book all that much more enjoyable. Her voice is sexy, kind of like a badass secret agent who bakes complex desserts.

I loved it enough to download and listen again at some point- something I often don't feel compelled to do! It's worth a credit for sure.

Worth the time

I heard it twice to understand better the story; I am not familiar with the part of the world that the book describes so it took me a little bit of time to figure out who was who; it was worth the time though. Masha Gessen really brought the story to reflect the goal of her book as described in latter chapters. I liked how the story presented all sort of unconventional points of view without casting jugdement on them, so I felt like I had time to think for myself; that aside the views on the judiciary system. Kind of wish Masha Gessen had narrated it though! The current narrator did an awesome job at pronouncing each name which what felt like their original pronunciation, but the narrative was mostly flat, and only seemed to pick up once with the receptionist and pizza story.

Missing the Brothers

I am a fan of this author and narrator. However I was disappointed that the writer didn’t dig up more information about the two brothers. There was a lot of text about peripheral characters, but I finished the book not understanding much about the relationship between the two boys.

A Struggle

I struggled to finish. It just breezed over the bombings. Heavy on country's history.