This exciting and psychologically penetrating account of the life and rule of Russia's eighteenth-century tsar-reformer develops an important theme. What happens when the drive for "progress" is linked to an autocratic, expansionist impulse rather than a larger goal of human emancipation? What was the price of power - for Russia, and for Peter himself? Evgenii V. Anisimov's provocative history of Peter thus asks important questions with special resonance today.

Sergei Feodorovich Platonov's "Time of Troubles" is a classic study of the years 1598-1613, a turbulent and decisive period in Russian history. Available for the first time in English, this work will be a valuable tool for students of the medieval as well as modern periods.

Platonov, himself a tragic victim of the regimentation imposed on Soviet cultural life in the 1920s, was born in 1860 and attained immense public and professional recognition in Russia as a leading historian. In his work he synthesized, to a high degree, two major traditions of Russian historiography: the St. Petersburg "school," which emphasized the collection and rigorous use of primary sources, and the Moscow "school" with its socioeconomic and geopolitical approaches. Time of Troubles represents the finished product of a lifetime spent in research, writing, and teaching. In broad terms it treats nearly a century and a half of Russian history (1500-1648); in detail it scrutinizes developments in the Muscovite State from 1598 to 1613. Some of the major issues covered in this volume are: the growing consolidation of Muscovite absolutism and the formation of a national state; the expansion of Muscovy to the west and southeast; the demise of the boyar class and the rise of the service-gentry; the emergence of serfdom as the social basis of Muscovite society; the cataclysmic end of one dynasty, the House of Rurik, and the beginnings of another, the House of Romanov. For Platonov--who devoted most of his career as a scholar to the study of these dramatic years--the epoch marked nothing less than the great divide between medieval Muscovy and modern Russia, witnessing the downfall of an essentially patrimonial regime and its replacement, after fierce struggles, by a more modern state founded on a new constellation of social groups.

This psychologically penetrating revisionist account of the life and rule of Rusia's 18th-century Tsar-reformer develops an important theme - that is, what happens when the drive for "progress" is linked to an autocratic, expansionist impulse rather than to a larger goal of human emancipation? And, what has been the price of power - both for Peter and for Russia?

From J. T. Alexander's early days in Detroit during the cultural revolution of the 1960s, he frequently grappled with confounding questions about the truth and purpose of his life. Social change presented many conflicting issues in Alexander's early years. Then, unexpectedly, he gained a clarity that answered the essential questions of life: What is truth? Is there a God? And who is he?

After receiving Christ as savior at the age of twenty-seven, the author embarked on a lifelong journey with new discoveries and a growing hope in this age of uncertainty. "The 21st Century Christian: Seeking Unchangeable Truths in an Ever-changing World" shares the author's personal story of how God made himself known at a personal level. Once Alexander experienced the reality of God, he was able to navigate our increasingly complex world with greater clarity, confidence, and a guiding purpose.

Laying bare his own intimate experiences with faith, as well as illuminating passages from the Bible, Alexander offers a rare, intimate portrait of one man's revelation that will serve to help anyone who is earnest in understanding a truth that is far greater than the limits of the human mind.