At the dawn of the nineteenth century, two great European empires met on the far side of the world. Conquistadores from Russia and Spain had been moving towards each other across the wildernesses of Siberia and the New World for centuries. Now one Russian aristocrat and adventurer greedily eyed the last great unclaimed imperial prize on earth - North America's Pacific Coast.

Nikolai Rezanov - diplomat, courtier, millionaire and gambler - was an imperial dreamer who set out to transform the precarious fur-hunting stations of the Alaskan coast into the hub of a Russian colony stretching from Siberia to California. His quest led him to San Francisco, where he became captivated by Conchita, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Spanish Governor, who embodied his dreams of both love and empire. More remarkable still, Rezanov's plan very nearly succeeded - by 1818, the easternmost settlements of the Tsar's dominions were in Sonoma County, California, and on the islands of Hawaii.

Glorious Misadventures traces Rezanov's dream of a Russian-American empire from the intrigues of the court of Catherine the Great to the wilds of the New World. Travelling in Rezanov's footsteps, Owen Matthews conjures a brilliantly original portrait of one of Russia's most eccentric empire-builders, both a visionary and a failure, a hero and a scoundrel.