I'm fascinated by this Colonel Kurtz-type figure that set up a kind of Buddhist state in Ourter Mongolia during the Russian Civil War. I'd like some reading recommendations, preferably something that isn't too pop-history but is still accessible enough to be read by someone who is outside the field.
Is James Palmer's Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia any good? The title seems a little sensationalistic.
Palmer's work is decent. It's pure pop history, of course, but if ever a figure fits a sensationalist narrative it's von Ungern-Sternberg. Less welcoming, for me, was the regular intrusion of a history of Buddhism and 'I woz ere' travelogue, no doubt a product of Palmer being a travel writer by trade. Worth a read but not something I'd rely on for research.
A more robust account of the warlords in the Far East, if less focused on von Ungern-Sternberg, is Jamie Bisher's White Terror:Cossack Warlords of the Trans-Siberian. This puts 'the Bloody Baron' in the context of an equally unsavoury, if not quite so mad, cast of White warlords.
Willard Sunderland has written a book on the Baron, The Baron's Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution quite recently. Sunderland is the author of Taming the Wild Field, one of my favorite books on the conquest and settlement of the steppes.