Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10562 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
'Perhaps the most accurate depiction of the demise of Nicholas and Alexandra that I've read. Beautifully researched and written...'
--Robert Alexander, author of THE ROMANOV BRIDE

Dr Harry Shukman, Emeritus Fellow of Modern Russian History, St Antony's College Oxford
'Utterly absorbing, a really good read, sensitive and balanced and surely the definitive last word on the subject'

dovegreyreader blog, June 19 2008
'Fresh and spell-binding...eminently readable but still fastidiously researched...utterly compelling'

Customer Reviews

A fascinating book that could really be the last words on the final days of the Last Imperial Family

I have just finished your book and I can not say how much I enjoyed it. One feels strangely saying so as it is a sad story by all means.

I have lots of books on the Romanovs and I was quite hesitant to buy another one. What can be possibly new about the whole subject?

But I have to admit that this excellent book gave me a new inside and you were able to separate the political side of things, from the human dimension. There is no romantic or religious vision of the final days. It is not written with a hidden agenda of glorifying the last Imperial Family. It clearly separates the politcial story that led to the downfall of the dynasty and the the human tragedy.

Helen Rappaport did not write the story - as it is ever so often - from the end. I appreciated very much how she showed the different personalities of the Imperial family and how they coped with the new situation. The personality of Alexandra, her illnesses, the illness of the Heir and how this effected all of the family long before the fall of the dynasty. The view that the isolation of the family during their reign found a sort of continuation during the confinement, but without the demands of the rule, and were partly at least from the Czar "welcome" is indeed very convincing. Her final comments hid a nerve with me. On top, I just like Helen Rappaport's style of writing.


All in all, I enjoyed this book immensely, it is fascianting, well written and gives the reader much stuff for further thought. I can only recommend this book!

A fascinating book that could really be the last words on the final days of the Last Imperial Family
I have just finished your book and I can not say how much I enjoyed it. One feels strangely saying so as it is a sad story by any means.

I have lots of books on the Romanovs and I was quite hesitant to buy another one. What can be possibly new about the whole subject?

But I have to admit that this excellent book gave me a new inside and you were able to separate the political side of things, from the human dimension. There is no romantic or religious vision of the final days. It is not written with a hidden agenda of glorifying the last Imperial Family. It clearly separates the politcial story that led to the downfall of the dynasty and the the human tragedy.

Helen Rappaport did not write the story - as it is ever so often - from the end. I appreciated very much how she showed the different personalities of the Imperial family and how they coped with the new situation. The personality of Alexandra, her illnesses, the illness of the Heir and how this effected all of the family long before the fall of the dynasty. The view that the isolation of the family during their reign found a sort of continuation during the confinement, but without the demands of the rule, and were partly at least from the Czar "welcome" is indeed very convincing. Her final comments hid a nerve with me. On top, I just like Helen Rappaport's style of writing.


All in all, I enjoyed this book immensely, it is fascianting, well written and gives the reader much stuff for further thought. I can only recommend this book!

The lilies in the forest.
Most readers of Helen Rappaport's gripping account of the last weeks of the lives of the Russian Imperial family will already know what happened. The great strength of this work is in the fleshing out of the characters from the first-hand accounts that Helen Rappaport has sourced, especially the Herman Bernstein archive in America. The Grand Duchesses especially become real girls with their different habits and characteristics well delineated. It is almost unbearable to read, but more unbearable not to, as the tick-tock of the narrative bears us inexorably closer to July 17th, the date of their brutal assassination.