When it was introduced into service in 1953, the T-10 represented a return to the "classic" Soviet heavy tank. Although considered a major threat to NATO tank forces, it also represented the end of an era. All gun-heavy tanks like the T-10 would eventually be made effectively redundant by later models like the T-62 which had powerful next-generation armament and new ammunition types. The tank was gradually withdrawn from service in the 1970s, though the last tanks would only leave Russian service by decree of the President of the Russian Federation in 1997. As such the T-10 outlived the Soviet state that had created it.

Never exported outside of the Soviet Union and rarely used in combat, the T-10 has remained a mysterious tank, with many of its variants unknown in the West until very recently. This study, written from original Russian and Ukrainian primary source documents that have only recently been made available, uncovers the history of this enigmatic tank using 130 stunning contemporary and modern photographs of the T-10 as well as full color side-view artwork.

James Kinnear was born in Great Britain and has researched the topic of Soviet and Russian military hardware since his first visit to the Soviet Union as a young teenager. James subsequently lived and worked in the post-Soviet Russian Federation and the other states of the former Soviet Union throughout the entire period of post-Soviet "stability" the two decades between the Soviet Union being considered a military threat and the Russian Federation finding itself again categorized as such in recent history. James has written hundreds of articles on Soviet and Russian technology. A Russian speaker, he has studied the subject from within the military intelligence community and as a civilian author. He is a formal contributor to IHS Jane's defense yearbooks and has published books on Soviet military technology with Barbarossa, Darlington, Osprey Vanguard and Tankograd.

Stephen L. "Cookie" Sewell was born in New York State and is a retired US Army Chief Warrant Officer and Department of the Army intelligence analyst. He was trained in the Vietnamese and Russian languages and has been an active Russian linguist since 1974. He has also been an enthusiastic scale modeler since the age of 5 and has built numerous models of armored vehicles, specializing in Russian, Soviet and American tanks and armored vehicles. He was the founder of the Armor Model and Preservation Society in 1992. While author of numerous intelligence articles he has also written extensively on American and Soviet armor and also provided a great deal of information to other authors on topics that include Korean and Vietnamese air war activities.