Empire Maker

"[Aleksandr Baranov] has never been the subject of a full-length scholarly biography. Empire Maker. . . is a praiseworthy effort to remedy that oversight. . . . Owens has woven biographical facts gleaned from widely scattered sources into a cohesive narrative set in historical and cultural context."

"[Empire Maker] transcends the limits of biography through some stellar archival work and by letting Baranov’s story recede at key times behind the larger epic of Russian America. The authors have managed to give us both a very useful picture of life as a merchant in nineteenth-century Russia as well as a new, very accessible general history of the colony that nicely complements Lydia Black’s and Ilya Vinkovetsky’s recent works on the subject. . . . [An] excellent biography."

"This is an highly enjoyable book about a part of America that few people in America would even know about. The author does an excellent job of placing Mr. Baranov in his time and the events that would influence him. An excellent book about a man very people know about."

"This work is not merely the first comprehensive and well-researched biography of Baranov but also a valuable contribution to the multilayered and interdisciplinary study of Russian overseas colonialism. . . . The project is important not only for the academic community but also for politicians, the public, and the media on both sides of the Atlantic."

"What will surely remain the definitive English-language study of Aleksandr Andreevich Baranov. . . . This deeply researched study is the rare book that historians of Russia and the North American frontier alike will read with great interest and benefit."

"[Owens provides] full and useful context for every stage of Baranov’s career, and much information which helps the reader appreciate the character of the man and how his experiences contributed to his success as chief manager. An important addition to the growing literature on the history of Russian America."

"Will be the definitive, critical biography of Baranov; there is really nothing else like it. In every chapter, Owens sets Baranov’s life in the context of the natural, geopolitical, and historical setting, filling in the background to the Baranov we encounter in the existing documentation and histories."

"In Owens’s hands, the story of Aleksandr Baranov becomes something much larger and more momentous than biography. Empire Maker brings to life the machinations of the Russian Empire in the northern Pacific: its ambitions and plans, its relations with indigenous populations, and certainly its leadership by Baranov. Based on decades of archival research, this may be the most important study to date of Russia’s American empire. Owen’s book is simply a phenomenal achievement."

"Aleksandr Baranov deserves to be known in the same company as John Jacob Astor and other frontier entrepreneurs whose enterprising efforts transformed North America in the age of imperial expansion. He reshaped the Pacific Rim and left an enduring mark on the geography and history of that far flung and diverse quarter of the globe. Exhaustively researched and elegantly written, Kenneth N. Owens’s treatment of this intriguing, colorful, and significant frontier figure will reward readers and reign as the definitive biography for decades to come."