It's the dawn of the 1990s, and the Soviet Union is crumbling and beginning to haphazardly experiment with capitalism. Jeff Teneson, an impetuous yet struggling American management consultant, thinks he sees an opportunity to travel to Moscow to cut deals, make money and finally prove himself. But as soon as he lands there, Jeff gets caught in a tug of war between two newly-formed and rickety Moscow businesses. One is run by ex-KGB agents who still operate like KGB agents. The other employs two ambitious yet naïve young Russians, Maxim and Natasha, who launch a plot to steal Jeff away from the KGB guys – which turns out to be a dangerous miscalculation. Their situation gets more complicated when Jeff falls for Natasha, and everybody becomes confused about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

The details in the novel about life in Moscow at that time may be hard to believe now, but they are based on the author's observations when he was a journalist covering the dismantling of the Soviet Union. The story is made up, but the facts are true. It was a period of chaos and deprivation, and of uncertainty over what the nation would become. Thugs ran the economy. Boris Yeltsin was a disastrous leader. Anything could happen, and it did – often in quirky and funny ways. Red Bottom Line will take you on a roller-coaster ride through a strange and unique moment in history.

Who knew a collapsed empire could be so fun? In Red Bottom Line, Kevin Maney spins a tale as hilariously unpredictable as the post-Soviet Russian economy. It turns out to be the perfect setting for a story that’s thrilling and sexy. My hyper-inflated expectations were more than met. -- Mo Rocca, host of the Mobituaries podcast 

Kevin Maney is a New York Times bestselling author, journalist, essayist and television commentator. His biography of Thomas Watson Sr., who built IBM, remains a favorite of critics and thoughtful business people. His funny and insightful Play Bigger became a phenomenon in tech's entrepreneurial ecosystem. You can stream his starring role in CNN's technology-focused episode of its series The Eighties. While Kevin has written narrative non-fiction for more than three decades, Red Bottom Line is his first novel.

Other books by Kevin Maney: Megamedia Shakeout The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson Sr. and the Making of IBM Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On and Others Don't Making the World Work Better The Two-Second Advantage Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future UnHealthcare: A Manifesto for Health Assurance Intended Consequences: How to Build Market-leading Companies with Responsible Innovation