Bloody White Baron

[rich]

this sounds pretty interesting

> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/books/review/Goodwin-t.html?ref=books

James Palmer's "Bloody White Baron," his life of Baron Roman Nikolai
Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg, is the story of "a loser — albeit an
upper-class one" — who turned himself into a visionary psychopath in
the Russian far east. Uncomfortable but fascinating reading, it weaves
together the weird alliances, murderous dreams and improbable careers
that emerged in the aftermath of World War I and the fall of czarist
Russia.

Mongolia is the focus, at a time when it was nominally free of Chinese
rule after the 1911 revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty and
ushered in a failing republic. The Japanese — flush with victory
against the Russians in 1905 — were groping toward the expansionist,
pan-Asian dream they articulated a few years later, while the Russians
were caught up in the vortex of the Bolshevik revolution. Into this
terrible shifting world of alliance and double-cross came Baron
Ungern, a czarist Buddhist anti-Semite with messianic objectives.

rich