Rieber's work is richly researched, with Russian and American archival repositories, as well as additional published primary sources, reflecting the book's focus on political and diplomatic history.
Alfred J. Rieber is University Professor Emeritus at the Central European University, where he was Chair of History from 1996 to 2000. He previously taught at Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of many books, including Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands. From the Early Modern Empires to the End of the First World War (2014), which won the 2015 World History Association Bentley Prize, and Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia (2015), which was shortlisted for the Pushkin Prize in Russian History in 2016.