Peter the Great

Peter the Great
by Robert K Massie

Peter the Great
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Book Summary Information

Author: Robert K Massie
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-04-19
ISBN: 1842121162
Number of pages: 960
Publisher: Phoenix Press

Book Reviews of Peter the Great

Book Review: 960 Pages and I didn't Want It To End
Summary: 5 Stars

What a treat this book was to read. Robert Massie demonstrates an ability at biography to a level I had never before experienced, though a huge portion of my reading is in fact biography. Truly amazing is the level of detail and background, which is somehow seamlessly spun into fibers, into yarns, and into a rich textile of thoughts and events sweeping through Russian and world drama by the fluid hand of Mr. Massie. He is with no exaggeration a master of his craft. I suppose this is why the book has earned a Pulitzer prize.

Not only is the worth of the author a call for every historically curious person to swim eagerly through this work, but so do the very facts of the account examined create among the richest stories available in history for any author to weave into narrative. It just so happens that here we have a wonderful and rich history handled by an unusually able story teller.

Peter The Great is such a curious character that one might consider such a collection of ability, insight, temper, and crushingly wielded power more the subject of a novel before thinking him one who walked the Earth, leaving his mark forever impressed upon Russia until the modern day.

It was Peter who pulled Russia kicking and screaming from the dark ages. It was Peter who created the Russian Navy from nothing (actually it is said from a single rotten sailboat). It was Peter who created Russia's first standing professional army. How? From the ranks of children with whom he played army as a child himself. He grew, they grew, and they became the core of the new Russian army. This by the way is a brutal and captivating tread of the story in its own right.

The book is riddled with such accounts, rendered in a degree of detail as to leave you simply awestruck and immersed in your own transported imagination. This to the point of regretting the arrival of that last of its many polished and engrossing pages.

This is truly a wonderful display of scholarship, of factual organization, and of rich story telling. This book is absolutely perfect for those with a mind, seeking to have it engaged.

Summary of Peter the Great

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.

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