In her concise, lucidly written new book, the historian Janet Hartley takes this uncontroversial premise and excites it with drama. This isn’t a book about the Volga itself, but rather the river’s role — physically and symbolically — in the turbulent making of Russia. For those in search of a topographical survey from source to delta, look elsewhere.

Hartley, emeritus professor of international history at the London School of Economics, has produced a study of the Volga that is as well-researched and accessible to general readers.

The Volga is enormous, one of the longest rivers in the world, and covers so many different kinds of territory that it might well be said to thread different worlds together on its temperamental path to the Caspian Sea. In telling the story of those worlds, Harley is faced with an impossible narrative; any riparian history can only ever be a judicious culling from an infinite trove of stories.

Janet M Hartley pens a vivid, human-centered story of the great river standing at a crossroad of peoples and cultures. She explores and contextualizes its significance to the history of Russia.

The Volga charts the human history of the river, from the earliest known records to contemporary times.