Bread upon the Waters chronicles how the unparalleled effort put into the building of a wide infrastructure to support the provisioning of the newly created but physically isolated city of St. Petersburg profoundly affected all of Russia's economic life and, ultimately, the historical trajectory of the Russian Empire as a whole.

Robert E. Jones is professor emeritus of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of two previous books, Provincial Development in Russia: Catherine II and Jakob Sievers and The Emancipation of the Russian Nobility, 1763-1785.