This is an expanded and expanded edition of a book about wars, revolutions and coups, about the scary and funny, about life and death. But first of all, this book is about people who find themselves witting or unwitting witnesses and participants in crisis and often fateful events. For several years in a row, one of these witnesses was journalist Mikhail Zygar. He entered the Uzbek city of Andijan immediately after the suppression of the rebellion that took place there. I visited Iraq and met the victims of the war going on there. But most importantly, wherever the reporter Zygar went, he always discovered that wars and revolutions are not at all what they seem. And life and death are separated from each other by just a step or less, just as the terrible is from the funny, the world is from the crisis, and reality is from the myth.