To me, the terms "excellent biography" and "Yuri Andropov" are mutually exclusive.
It was written by two Soviet dissidents, during the early 1980s.
They mocked and ridiculed the western media trying to "polish" Andropov's image, so as to make Reagan look bad. (Just as they did later with Gorbachev.)
By the way, the mountain man primitive, the "ThomWVA" primitive, bears striking resemblences to Leonid Brezhnev, especially in old age.