The March of Muscovy: Ivan the Terrible and the Growth of the Russian Empire, 1400-1648

Dust jacket notes: "'In the beginning,' says Mr. Lamb in his introduction, 'there was only a town on a river, and not a very notable town at that. Upon that town of Moscow certain forces acted, and around it outward events took shape, resulting in migration and colonization across the breadth of the Eurasian continent, and even bridging the sea to the New World. What were these forces? Why did such a mass movement take place? And why did it move the way it did?' In answering these questions, and others, Harold Lamb provides the background for the larger and more puzzling query: how was the Russian giant born, and how did it grow? Harold Lamb has a way of breathing life into the past, of combining the best of scholarship with the most of interest and vitality. Now, in telling the story of the growth of fifteenth- to seventeenth-century Russia, he has called forth the voices of contemporary visitors and merchants, exploring Cossacks, diplomats of the time, exiled priests, and the words of that most acute observer of his own people, Ivan the Terrible. For Ivan is the dominant figure of the story as he was the dominant figure of his age - terrifying, cruel, visionary, ambitious, and able. The March of the Muscovy is the story of the work that Ivan the Terrible began, a work that may not yet be completed."