Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was "present at the creation" of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.

This was but the first in a string of daring moves that kept Thayer in the thick of all things Russian for the next two decades. Architect of the infamous party that Mikhail Bulgakov...