I'm interested in reading a book on the fall of the USSR that takes a critical look at the common narratives in popular (especially US) media about that time. Those popular narratives, as I understand them, are that collapse was inevitable and reform was impossible, the transition to capitalism was liberatory and democratic, Yeltsin was a positive force, etc.
Now, I'm not looking for pre-formed conclusions. I'd be perfectly happy with a history that considers those questions and finds the popular narratives are correct. I saw that "Stalin's Tomb" is on the AskHistorians book list, and while I'm interested in reading it at some point, it doesn't seem so focused on what I'm thinking about.
Edit: Sorry, Lenin's Tomb, not Stalin's. Lenin only had to share with Stalin for a short time.
I believe you mean Lenin's Tomb by David Remnick. It's a good book, but it should be stressed that it is a collection of articles that David Remnick wrote while a journalist based in Moscow.
Stephen Kotkin's Armageddon Averted is probably a good option in that it covers a broader period (roughly 1980-2000) and puts the events of 1985-1991 (the Gorbachev years) into that broader context. He specifically addresses the question of whether the dissolution was inevitable and argues why it probably wasn't.
It's a "smaller" history in that it specifically covers 1991, and within that year mostly the months between August and December, but Serhii Plokhy's The Last Empire looks at the specific turns of the relationships between Yeltsin, Gorbachev and other leaders (notably H.W. Bush and Leonid Kravchuk) and how that led to the USSR ending in December 1991. In Plokhy's view, the outcome that occurred by the end of 1991 wasn't necessarily inevitable and certainly wasn't predicted by any of the parties involved.