The City and Tsar: Peter the Great and the move to the West 1648-1762.

Lamb, Harold. The City and Tsar: Peter the Great and the Move to the West 1648-1762. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957. Print.

I am currently taking a Russian history of culture, art and politics course, so going into this Shelfie, I choose to focus on the Eurasian Empire of Russia, Peter the Great, and the impact he had during his reign. When searching the library catalog for titles that fit what I wanted to read, I looked up keywords such as “Peter the Great” and “Russia”. Naturally, titles about his bringing of western culture to Russia appeared. I chose the book entitled The City and Tsar: Peter the Great and the Move to the West because after listening to lectures in the Russian history class on him, I feel this title embodied Peter the Great best. The books cover is a plain red and the pages contain little illustrations and only a few maps. However, from reading the chapter outlines, I gathered that the book covered the full scope of Peter the Great’s travels to Western Europe, mainly Britain, and the aspirations he had for bringing Russia out of the “dark ages”. It also included the changes Peter the Great put into action in Russia and his revamping of St. Petersburg, a major city in Russia. The books that surrounded this one on the shelf were also about the life and times of Peter the Great and the impact he had on the history of the Russian Empire.