 "Sale of the Century" is an account of privatization in Russia that is informed by interviews with leading Russian businessmen that Freeland conducted during four years from 1994 to 1998 that she lived in Russia as Moscow Bureau Chief for the Financial Times.The book chronicles the challenges that the "young reformers" championing capitalism such as Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar had in wresting control of Russian industry out of the hands of the communist "red barons".The compromises they made, such as the loans for shares scheme, allowed businessmen such as Mikhail Friedman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Vladimir Potanin to seize control of the economy and install themselves as Russian oligarchs.