East of the Sun: The Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia

In sweep, color, and grandeur, the conquest and settlement of Siberia, as chronicled in Benson Bobrick's *East of the Sun*, compares with the winning of the American West. This monumental work presents what Bobrick identifies as the greatest pioneering story in history, uniquely combining the heroic colonization of an intractable virgin land, the ghastly dangers and high adventure of Arctic exploration, and the grimmest saga of penal servitude. Charting 400 years of continual human striving from the first Cossack foray across the Ural Mountains in 1581 to the fall of Gorbachev, *East of the Sun* is history on a grand, panoramic scale, offering the first complete account of this strange and terrible story. It's a drama of unremitting extremes and elemental confrontations, pitting man against nature, and man against man, across a land mass covering five million square miles—7.5% of the total land surface of the globe. With vivid immediacy, Bobrick describes the often brutal subjugation of Siberia's aboriginal tribes and the cultures that were destroyed; the great 18th-century explorations that defined its borders and Russia's attempts to "extend" Siberia with settlements in Alaska, California, and Hawaii; and its grim transformation into a penal colony for criminal and political exiles, an experiment more terrible than Australia's Botany Bay. The narrative also encompasses the stupendous building of the Trans-Siberian Railway across seven time zones, Siberia's key role in the bloody aftermath of the October Revolution in 1917, and the devastating impact of Stalin's dreaded Gulag. *East of the Sun* exemplifies Bobrick's mastery of grand narrative and meticulous research, transforming a vast, often mysterious subject into a compelling and deeply human story. His ability to fuse detailed historical analysis with evocative prose, exploring themes of human endurance against extreme odds, makes this a standout work and a quintessential entry on any list of Benson Bobrick's best books.