Steve LeVine embarked on an eight-city tour to discuss his new book, The Oil and the Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea.” It’s a history of the last 150 years in the Russian empire, told through oil and the outsized characters who dominated the long period. The canvas of the narrative is the world, the characters running from Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson and Lenin to Reagan, both Bushes, Clinton, Queen Elizabeth, Gorbachev and Putin.