From its earliest beginnings thousands of years ago, the course of man’s progress has been measured by his empires. Large, dynamic flows of power, people, and culture that merge, thrive, then break apart - the pieces only to merge again in a new configuration, the process to be repeated. Through pictures and words, "Empires: Their Rise and Fall" brings the reader face to face with many of the world’s greatest empires. Full-color photographs are combined with an absorbing narrative in a lively historical account of each empire and an examination of the period’s most enduring cultural achievements. This volume in the series focuses on Russia of the Czars, and Portugal of the Navigators, two empires that arose at Europe’s geographical extremities and spread out in different directions - the Portuguese to the tropical expanses of Brazil, Africa, and southern Asia, and the Russian across central Asia and Siberia to Alaska. Vast cultural gulfs separated the Portuguese, with their Latin tongue and Catholic faith, from the Slavic, Orthodox Russians. Indeed, the Portuguese and Russian paths never crossed; the two states never fought a war and never even had a serious diplomatic dispute. It would be difficult to find two of history’s great empires less alike culturally than those of Portugal and Russia. In their social and economic structures, however, the empires share features that should impress upon us the need to search beyond superficial dissimilarities for underlying historical patterns.