The name of Nobel usually calls to mind Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, and the internationally prestigious prizes that bear his name. But Alfred was only one member of a creative and innovative family who built an industrial empire in prerevolutionary Russia. The saga begins with an emigré from Sweden, Immanuel Nobel, who was an architect, a pioneer producer of steam engines, and a maker of armaments, including the underwater mines that were widely used in the Crimean War.

Immanuel's sons included Alfred; Robert, who directed the family's activities in the Caspian oil fields; and Ludwig, an engineering genius and manufacturing magnate whose boundless energy and fierce determination created the Russian petroleum industry. Ludwig's son Emanuel showed similar mettle, shrewdly bargaining with the Rothschilds for control of the Russian markets and competing head-on with Standard Oil, Royal Dutch, and Shell for lucrative world markets. Emanuel not only expanded the Russian oil industry but also helped to modernize the Russian navy and commanded a fleet of three hundred ships.Perhaps no family in history has played so decisive a role in building an industrial empire in an underdeveloped but resource-rich nation. Yet the achievements of the Nobel family have been largely forgotten. When the Bolsheviks came to power, the empire, which had taken eighty years to design and build, was nearly destroyed, bringing a sudden and bitter end to one of the most remarkable industrial odysseys in world history.

Robert W. Tolf (1929-2015) graduated from Harvard University, received his doctorate from the University of Rochester, and spent fourteen years in the US Foreign Service, stationed in Scandinavia and Switzerland. He was a critic and columnist. The Russian Rockefellers was his first book.