Lincoln (late a professor of Russian history, Northern Illinois U.) narrates the long history of the Russian conquest of Siberia. He begins his story with the Mongol invasion and its role in the rise of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and continues through to an assessment of the Soviet legacy in Siberia. Much of the tale concerns infrastructure building and resource extraction and their connections to the geopolitical strategic goals of various Russian governments, but Lincoln pays no small attention to the many awful human dramas witnessed in the history of Siberia, including the legions of prisoners exiled to the remote land and forced into labor by Tsars and Soviet leaders alike. This is a paperbound edition of a work first published in 1993. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)