The History Files" series presents the people events & ideas that have shaped our world through the lens of recent research. Each title covers a single topic & is illustrated with telling images from out-of-the-way sources & a collection of facsimile documents bringing the past to life in an accessible yet authoritative format. Peter Waldron tells the stories of all the Russians exploring the vast expanses of the empire & the lives of the rural peasants describing the ways in which Russia took on or rejected Western influences & recounting how the empire was built & maintained. He examines the great flowering of Russian art literature & music the pressures for & against reform & finally the fall of the Tsarist regime in a cataclysm of violence. The facsimile documents bring the period alive as do the poignant"ations taken from first-hand accounts detailed box features & over 150 evocative images."