Peter the Great

Peter the Great, crowned Tsar of Russia at the age of ten, believed that whatever he wanted he should have — and the sooner the better. What he wanted most was to bring his beloved country into the modern world. He traveled to the West to learn European ways — the first Tsar ever to leave Russia — disguised as a common soldier.

He explored the West with excitement and curiosity and returned home ready to undertake a series of momentous social reforms. And to satisfy his boyhood dream of a Russian naval port, he began to build, on a freezing swamp, a glittering new capital to be named St. Petersburg.

Meticulously researched text and sumptuous illustrations capture the fabulous world of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Tsarist Russia and the greatness of its larger-than-life leader, a man of huge stature and tremendous spirit whose impatience and vision, insatiable curiosity and boundless energy transformed half a continent.