Jelavich, Barbara. St. Petersburg and Moscow: Tsarist and Soviet Foreign Policy, 1814–1974 (1974).
 Kagan, Frederick, and Robin Higham, eds. The Military History of Tsarist Russia (2008) excerpts
 Khodarkovsky, Michael. Russia's Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500-1800 (2002).
 Lieven, Dominic, ed. The Cambridge History of Russia: vol 2: Imperial Russia, 1689–1917 (2006)
 Lincoln, W. Bruce. The Romanovs: Autocrats of All the Russias (1983) excerpt and text search, sweeping narrative history