
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.
Born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1929, Robert K. Massie studied history at Yale University and Oxford University before embarking on" a highly successful career as writer and editor. Among the publications with which the author has been associated are Newsweek, USA-1, The Saturday Evening Post, The Reporter, Saturday Review, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review. Mr. Massie currently lives in Irvington, New York, with his wife and three children. The affliction of the author's young son by hemophilia inspired Mr. Massie's interest in the tragic drama of Nicholas and Alexandra, whose son also was stricken with the disease. This factor, as many reviewers have commented, gives this brilliant work an added dimension of human understanding rare in the writing of history.

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.
Born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1929, Robert K. Massie studied history at Yale University and Oxford University before embarking on" a highly successful career as writer and editor. Among the publications with which the author has been associated are Newsweek, USA-1, The Saturday Evening Post, The Reporter, Saturday Review, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review. Mr. Massie currently lives in Irvington, New York, with his wife and three children. The affliction of the author's young son by hemophilia inspired Mr. Massie's interest in the tragic drama of Nicholas and Alexandra, whose son also was stricken with the disease. This factor, as many reviewers have commented, gives this brilliant work an added dimension of human understanding rare in the writing of history.