Product Description

A barbarous, volatile feudal tsar with a taste for torture; a progressive and enlightened reformer of government and science; a statesman of vision and colossal significance: Peter the Great embodied the greatest strengths and weaknesses of Russia while being at the very forefront of her development. Robert K Massie's award-winning study remains the essential portrait of the man and his era.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #614540 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 960 pages

About the Author
Robert K Massie was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1929. He studied American History at Yale University and Modern European History at Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes scholar. He lives in Irvington, New York.

Customer Reviews

Best Historical Biography I've ever read
This book is truly epic in scale, you not only get Peter, but Malborough, Charles XII of Sweden, The Sun King, William of Orange, Augustus Of Poland and the Ottoman Empire. The amazing thing is,this mass of information is pulled into a narrative that is so well written, that you scarcely realise that you've just ploughed through 850 odd pages. Fantastic

Brilliant work on an absolute historical masterpiece!
My compliments go out to Mr Massie. This book is without doubt very well written. It is ; interesting, detailed, well composed with no boring bits, it maintains your interest. It has an incredible array of historical facts and the storyline has been well thought of. The language used is easy to read yet intellectually stimulating. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and learnt a lot about history in Europe of that era and not just of Peter the Great. I will be buying his other books.

Exceptional
Whilst it would be difficult to make a history of Peter the Great uninteresting, Massie's biography is one of the best history books I've read.

Sufficiently detailed for the 'serious reader', it is also a wonderfully well written general account of the early eighteenth century. The book also contains numerous anecdotes; my favourite being how Peter's entourage stayed at John Evelyn's house in Deptford - and destroyed the grounds by racing in wheelbarrows before tipping people into hedges.

Highly recommended.