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Summary: Great and entertaining
Review: This history book reads like a novel, a very good one. Is entertaining and the story flows giving you a great description of the main character as well as the other important players of the related time. At some point you won't know if you are reading about Peter or Charles of Sweden, even Louis the XIV and the Turks..., and you will want more from all of them. The best part is that the author won't let you down in any issue and you will know the end of every story he is trying to tell you. He will also fill you on the backgrounds of every character and society, so you won't feel lost at all.
After this book, I went looking for more on those other characters, the Northern Wars, the wars of Louis the XIV and more on Charles XII and Gustavus Adolphus Wars. Even on Constantinople...
You will love it. Is a lock!
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Summary: This book is great!
Review: It is so full of information, yet such an easy reading that it is hard to put it down. The only problem is that when you put 1000 pages in a paperback format, it starts falling appart as soon as you start reading it.
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Summary: THE Source on All Matters Petrine
Review: This is THE book on Peter the Great. It will continue to be read when our grandchildren are very old, and probably beyond that. Not only does Massie take us through every facet of Peter's life, his tortured family background, his foreign friends and mistresses; Massie also immerses us in the world affairs of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Thus it is that we meet the Dutch/English monarch, William of Orange, the boy king of France, Louis XV, the doomed genius Charles XII of Sweden, the Polish ruler Augustus, the strict King Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia (Fritz the great's dad) and the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor. Voltaire wrote that Peter the Great and Charles XII of Sweden were the most remarkable men to walk the earth since antiquity. Massie makes a persuasive case for Peter to retain that title. A relentless improver, innovator, experimentor, architect and strategist, he is one of the most ingenious and hyperactive leaders in history. He was not, as Massie points out, an utterly gentle soul, nor a humanitarian by any stretch, but he did within a matter of decades transform his country as radically a country has ever been changed. If ever a biography deserved unqualified praise, this is the one.
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Summary: Outstanding book
Review: Massie is one of my favorite writers in any genre. He describes people and events in a vivid masterful style and makes history come alive for the reader. His biography of Peter the Great is the best of his books and the main reason I got interested in Russian history. The best aspect of this book is that not only thoroughly delves into this complex character but also gives an extensive, vivid snapshot of the whole period so the reader get a good understand of Europe during the late 17th and early 18th century and the many other interesting figures in the period. I couldn't recommend this book more highly.
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Summary: Peter the Great by Robert K. Massie
Review: This is one of the most fascinating historical books I have ever read. It is masterfully written and documented and it flows like a novel. I read it (the hard back version) some time around early 1994 after visiting Russian in September 1993. I began to understand the nature of the Russian people through this book. It is absolutely brilliant.
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Summary: Honorary Dutchman
Review: Massie explores this very complex character in the historical context of a rural, backward Russia lacking any Navy, and imprisoned in a feudal system centered on Moscow. How did things move to St. Petersburg? Where did the Navy originate? What happened to the Boyars's beards? What happened was Peter. First he grew up playing army with his friends, many of whom he later put in charge of the real army. Then he sojourned to the Netherlands to learn the art of shipbuilding, and to improve his drinking and lampooning skills. Then home to massacre his enemies, put his sister in prison, and murder his own son. In addition to building a new capital to shut out the influence of the old court at Moscow. Not nescessarily in that order. And they say the communists were tough. Peter's Summer palace still stands (or still is rebuilt from what the Germans did to it), and sports a Delft-blue tiled fireplace, with a Delft-blue image of Bacchus, the god of drunkenness on the mantle of it. Back in the heroic age of Russian history, when one guy could do all this, it's sobering to see his architectural remains, there and in Moscow. Then at the Winter palace, we still see the extensive Dutch art collection first amassed by Peter. Massie brings all of this to life, and not only for Western readers. On a trip to Moscow in 1981, I met a gigantic young man in a bar. "You're about as tall as Peter the Great" I said. "No" he replied in heavily accented English, "Peter was two centimeters taller." This was oddly refreshing to hear, back in those sclerosed-Boshevik days, and it would have been impossible to grasp any of it without this book. It might be even more appropriate now, since Leningrad is gone and St. Petersburg is back. And the last Czar is now reburied in the church in the Citadel, just outside of town, next to the Royal Mint founded by Peter.
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Summary: A GREAT BOOK ABOUT PETER
Review: As an author with my debut novel in its initial release, I realize the importance of selecting subject matter that moves beyond the specific story in any single book. Robert Massie has achieved this basic literary goal masterfully in PETER THE GREAT. In this well-researched and informative volume, Massie tells the tale of Peter the Great, his country, European culture, and his historical era. Massie presents Peter in human terms with characteristics that are often contradictory. On a much more important level, this book presents Massie's view of one of the key eras in Russian history. Peter's era provides many crucial elements of the cultural underpinnings of one of the mightiest nations in the modern world--cultural underpinnings that must be understood by every thoughtful and informed individual.
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Summary: Incredible book! Highly recommended!
Review: Peter the Great... was just that, GREAT! To say that I enjoyed this book is a bit of an understatement. Robert K. Massie wrote a historical account of one of the most fascinating characters in the modern age and wrote it to read like a novel. When I first bought this book, I had just gotten back from a trip to St. Petersburg and was blown away by this incredible place and I was interested to 'read-up' on the man behind the creation. I found that this book was all that and more. History, will always be subjective but Mr. Massie did 'Peter the Great' justice by not only telling us of his positives characteristics (he tried and succeeded in bringing Russia to the modern age) but also allowing us to see his negative characteristics (volatile temper and estranged family connections). I recommend this book to anyone (in fact, I have given it as a gift on two occasions) and now I'm reading some of his other books
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Summary: A Perfect Biography
Review: Massie's book is a magnificent accomplishment. The depth and scope of this (admittedly massive) book are breathtaking, the writing consistently superb, and the subject endlessly fascinating. Massie never lets the march of historical fact get in the way of a good anecdote, or vice-versa, and many of the images scattered through the 800-odd pages (Peter's retinue of dwarves, traitors hanged and their scaffolds floated down the rivers of Russia as a warning, the Swedish army limping though the hot and dusty Russian countryside) are unforgettable. This book knocked me out, frankly, and I'm off to Russia to see for myself as soon as I can. A stunning achievement. If only all biographies were this well researched and written.
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Summary: A Well Earned Five Star Rating
Review: It is rare that I give any book five stars, because there is always something about a book that could be better. Robert Massie's "Peter the Great" is one of the few exceptions to that rule. His writing is elegant and beautiful, and all of the events he writes about, from the building of the Russian fleet, to the construction of St. Petersburg, to the battles of the Great Northern War, are fascinating. A lesser author could have easily jumbled the countless events in this book into a an unreadable mess, but this book is very interesting from beginning to end. In addition to all of the events discussed, historical figures like Charles XII of Sweden and George I of Hanover (then England) are portrayed in detail, with fascinating little tidbits strewn throughout. If your historical interest in Peter the Great, or Russia, or 18th Century Europe is even miniscule, you will find great value in this book (no pun intended), and it will absolutely have you searching for more books on subjects you may not even have known of before reading it. Hands down one of the best books of any type I have read in a long time.
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