Harold Lamb's superb story-telling and clear, sharp scholarship are focused on Peter the Great, his gigantic labors to raise Russia in one generation to cultural equality with Europe, and his efforts to mold and shape a sprawling empire.

At the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648, the city of Moscow had extended its sway eastward through the Asiatic continent. People began to ask, "Will the city control the continent?" or "Will the continent control the city?" These were crucial questions...questions that continue to bedevil Russians to this day.

Lamb describes graphically this Empire of Settlements, the sporadic revolutions that broke out from time to time, and the stubborn resistance of the Manchu Dynasty in China, along with numerous primitive tribes that checked Muscovite expansion.

The story of Alexis Romanov, Peter's father, who tried to change the despotic Muscovite rule, is also part of this epic history. But most vital of all, The City and the Tsar sets forth the drama of Peter the Great himself, and the final decision he made between east and west.

The author has done a brilliant job in pictorializing the essential link between the confused realm of Ivan the Terrible and the final defeat of the remnants of the Mongol Khans.

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