With its vast historical canvas, this work is a meditation on Eurasian history from the earliest times to the present. Ascherson evokes the world of Herodotus and Aeshylus; Ovid's place of exile on what is now the coast of Romania; the decline and fall of Byzantium; the mysterious fastnesses of the Christian Goths; the Tatar Khanates; the growth of Russian power across the grasslands, and the centuries of war between the Ottoman and Russian Empires around the Black Sea. The book covers events in the 20th century, such as the terrors of Stalinism and its fascist arch-enemy, striving for mastery of these shores.