A subcontinental land-mass one-and-a-half times the size of the United States, Siberia is the richest resource area on the face of the Earth. It is also the hope of Russia's desperate future, as the former Soviet republics break away. Yet, to most people, Siberia remains obscure. This narrative covers four centuries of history, telling the story of Siberia's conquest and settlement, from the first crossing of the Ural Mountains by an outlaw band of Cossacks in 1581, up to the present. It describes the subjugation of Siberia's aboriginal tribes; the great explorations of the 18th century that defined its extent; Russia's attempt to extend Siberia to America (with settlements in Alaska, California and Hawaii); its transformation into a penal colony for criminal and political exiles; the building of the astonishing Trans-Siberian Railway across seven time-zones from the Urals to Vladivostok; Siberia's critical role in the bloody Civil War that followed the October Revolution of 1917; and the Gulag Archipelago, which corrupted its very soil. The book ends with a succinct account of Siberia today. The American author also wrote Fearful Majesty: the Life and Reign of Ivan the Terrible and Labyrinths of Iron: Subways in History, Myth, Art, Techology and War.