Through the centuries, Russia has swung between successful expansionism, catastropic collapse and spectacular recovery. This illuminating history traces these cycles from the late Neolithic age to Ivan the Terrible and Catherine the Great, and from the height of Communism to the truncated Russian Federation of today. The narrative takes in the magnificent cities of Kiev, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and stretches to Alaska in the east, to the Black Sea and the Ottoman Empire in the south, to the Baltic in the west and to the Arctic Ocean in the north, asking what the future holds for Russia and her neighbors.