Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Peter the Great: His Life and World
Book Review: Excellent
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is absorbing to the point that you have withdrawals when you are done reading it. It is an instant classic chronicalling not only the Russia that Peter inherited and changed, but also the European and middle eastern empires of the time. Peter is a very interesting and important person as was this time in the history of the world. This book puts you in the middle of the massive social and economic changes that Peter the great made to bring Russia into the modern european world. The interactions between Peter and his people and the struggles that they fought is enough to make this a great book but the deep coverage of the details makes it an excellent book to read.Book Review: Excellent, well written, and very interesting...
Summary: 5 Stars
The first time I picked up this book, I looked at the dauntingly large size of the book and was dismayed. However, upon closer inspection, I realized that this was not another dry description of another person in history. Rather, this biography on Peter the Great is written very well. It draws the interest of the reader, and at times is difficult to put down. The detail in which Massie describes the life of Peter the Great is amazing. I expected a biography, meaning a history of the life of one specific person, but I received a history of Europe at the time. In other words, if one is looking for an in depth look at Russia in the late 17th through mid 18th century, and an introduction to the history of all of Europe at the time, look no further. However, one must be forewarned that if they are seeking outlines of these different parts of Russian history, this is definitely not the book for them. Massie explores so many different things that it is difficult not to have learned something new about these times upon reading this book. I definitely recommend this book and hold it in high regard.Book Review: Extremely Enjoyable but...
Summary: 4 Stars
Very readable, and quite enjoyable. Almost as readable as a novel, but sometimes it goes too far in presenting speculation as substantiated fact. There are some glaring errors and omissions in this book, particularly concerning the last years of the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich's (Peter's Father), and the early years of the reign of Peter the Great. For example, much of the role played by the Regent Sofia in the Strelsy revolt is somewhat conjectural, but unsubstantiated. She most certainly had a hand in it, but it is difficult to pin down her activity in those crucial hours after Tsar Alexei's sudden departure.Another fault is that it tends to isolate events that took place during Peter's life time without setting the appropiate context. Vasily Golitsyn's two Crimean campaigns are a case in point. No mention is made of the time when the Don Cossacks managed to capture the fortress of Azov, and massacred the people within the city down to the last muslim. This massacre appalled Tsar Alexei, and as a consequnce hs refused to follow up the Cossack vistory with Russian support. The Don Cossacks, who supported the election of Mikhail Romanov to the throne, felt betrayed by Tsar Alexei, and were forced to abandon their prize in the face of the vastly superior Turkish army. So when Golitsyn began his campaign a generation later, this betrayal by Tsar Alexei was still in living memory. Golitsyn received little of the support he expected from the Don Cossacks, or any of the other indigenous peoples of the region he was travelling through.
This tendency to isolate events overstresses Peter's position as the great modernizer of Russia, when the wheels of modernization were set in motion perhaps as far back as Ivan the Great a hundred years earlier. Tsar Peter benefitted greatly from the small but important precedents toward modernization established by his predecessors, including the great Patriach Tikhon. Aside from this, this book is a fascinating look at a man who left the world a completely different place from the place he found when he arrived on the scene.
Setting its faults aside, this is perhaps the best book on Peter the Great in English, and I hope many people read it, and learn more about what it is that makes Russia so different, yet so much like the nations of the West. This contradiction is very much characterizes Peter the Great the man, the ruler, and his impact in Russian and European history.
Book Review: Facinating Picture of 17th Century Russia
Summary: 4 Stars
Peter the Great is a well written book about an unusual and engaging character. Interesting insight into the early formative years of Europe; interesting insight into how Russia was (and in some ways remains) isolated from Europe by culture as well as geography.Book Review: Fantastic Reading
Summary: 5 Stars
Robert K. Massie's "Peter the Great" is one of the best historical biographies I've ever read. His eye for detail and his storytelling ability are unparalleled in historical writing. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in history (of any kind) and especially to any with an interest in European or Russian history. "Peter the Great" is hard to put down. How many times have you said that about historical nonfiction?