The narrow focus on political history was frustrating at times - for example, the effects of the Crimean War on public opinion is discussed at length, but the description of the war itself is so paltry that I had no idea who Russia was fighting against in the war, and could only infer that she lost.

The broad temporal sweep (400 pages for 500 years) seems like it'd be aimed at newcomers to the country's history, but I found I had to supplement the text with Wikipedia on nearly every page simply to understand the terms and historical figures used without introduction. People who don't need that sort of help might be bored by the overview.

Still, the subject matter is fascinating; despite several different authors writing for different eras, the link between historical causation still stands out. The consistent failure to divide land in an intelligent manner, the incompetency of the ruling class and the repeated way that reform always seemed to make things worse could be described as the major themes. ( )

The text was entirely too dry, and mashed together. It was unreadable... ( )

Interesting though, as must always been the case with such a single-volume history , it did veer towards the simplistic. Still, I enjoyed it, ( )