Peter the Great by Robert K. Massie Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Peter the Great
Book Review: The best book I have ever read
Summary: 5 Stars
Without a doubt, this is the best book I have ever read. It is immensely entertaining and informative. Robert Massie's descriptions and detailed portrayals provide a clear picture of Peter's life and times. Even though I read this book a decade ago, the scenes and stories still seem almost as real to me as personnel experiences. Peter's employment as a shipwright in Holland, his torturing of mutinous soldiers and dental patients, and wars raged against the Finns and Tartars still bring vivid images to my mind.Book Review: The best history book ever
Summary: 5 Stars
I teach history and have read a lot of books. This is the best history book I have ever read. Massie does such an amazing job at bringing the reading into the age. Peter was a fascinating man. Massie makes you understand what made him also great.Book Review: This book is great!
Summary: 5 Stars
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.Book Review: Time travel with this Pulitzer Prize masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book over 15 years ago. My copy of the 1986 edition with a picture of Maximilian Schell on the cover is still available on Amazon. Schell played Peter the Great in the TV mini-series based on the book. Too bad the film hasn't made it to DVD. I'd love to see it re-mastered for blu-ray. In any case, the book is excellent. It's very educational, easy to read, and undoubtedly the finest book ever written about Peter the Great in English. I remember being moved to tears when Peter died, partly because I grew so close to him through the pages of this magnificent book, and partly because I knew I'd soon be finished reading it. Along with some classic episodes of very heavy drinking, the book encompasses the tragedy and grandeur of Russian history. But, as the subtitle suggests, it's more than that. The book goes beyond biographical information about Peter and his Russian homeland to include fascinating elements of his world; foremost among them, France and Sweden with their wealthy and often aggressive kings, Louis XIV and Charles XII. (I've seen the bronze of young King Charles in Stockholm pointing east toward Russia.) So, with over 15 years gone by, it's probably time for me to revisit this old master and buy a copy of Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra which has also racked up a nice collection of favorable reviews and 5-star ratings.Book Review: Truly the Great
Summary: 5 Stars
Robert Massie may be the best popular narrative historian of his generation, and "Peter the Great" is his greatest accomplishment to date.
Peter Romanov, as described by Massie, was a dynamo. "The most accurate image...is of a man who throughout his life was perpetually curious, perpetually restless, perpetually in movement." His energy and enthusiasm reminded me of Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill - a man who genuinely wanted to be in the action and preferably at the hottest point possible.
The central event of Peter's life, and thus this book, was the Great Northern War (1700-1721) against Sweden and his royal nemesis, King Charles XII, who was every bit as gifted, eccentric, and aggressive as the tsar. From the humiliating defeat at Narva in 1700 to the Stalingrad-like destruction of the vaunted Swedish army at Poltava in 1709 to the Treaty of Nystad in 1721 that cemented Peter's hold on the Baltic coast, including his new capital, St. Petersburg, the contest with Charles shaped both his life and legacy.
Personally, Peter was a complicated individual. On the one hand, he was modest, progressive, loyal and mirthful. He eschewed royal pomp and ceremony and often attempted (mostly in vain) to travel incognito to better engage and learn from commoners, especially the various crafts associated with shipbuilding. He was solely responsible for transforming Russia from a remote, semi-barbarian outpost to a nearly first-class European naval, military and economic power in a single generation. Only the Meiji in late nineteenth century Japan could claim such rapid success. Part of that success owed to the fact that Peter valued innate ability and demonstrated competence in his subordinates above nobility of birth. He consistently promoted talented men of humble and/or foreign origin (General Patrick Gordon, Francis Lefort, and Alexander Menshikov, to name the most prominent) to the most senior positions in government and resolutely backed them despite strong resistance from the Russian nobility. Such disregard for personal origin and deep, lasting affection extended to his personal life where an illiterate Lithuanian orphan went from Peter's mistress to his devoted wife and ultimately crowned Empress Catherine I. The tsar was also a drinker and reveler of epic proportions. The boisterous activities of Peter's close group of merry makers, the self-proclaimed Jolly Company, and the alcohol-sodden rituals of their Mock Synod would put any college fraternity to shame.
On the other hand, the great tsar was mercurial, suspicious, and violent, even sadistic. Peter did not hesitate to crush with brutal severity any threat to his power, especially those affairs with even a whiff of involvement from the disbanded Old Guard militia, the Streltsy, their co-religionist supporters, the Old Believers of ultra Orthodox Church, and their favored member of the Romanov clan, the deposed former regent Sophia, Peter's half-sister. Peter was often present and may have personally participated in torture, including roasting over pits, knoutings, and beheadings. The most fascinating and poignant chapter of Peter's eventful life, I found, was his estranged relationship with his son, the tsarevich Alexis, which ended in international flight, arrest, trial, torture and death. That episode showed the powerful tsar at his best (compassionate and loving) and worst (paranoid and vindictive).
One final point on why I loved this book and others by Massie. He tells interesting stories and often delivers sharp apercus about society in distant times. Here we find King Frederick William of Prussia admiring his special ornamental military regiment of seven-foot giants, take a peak inside the secret world of the harem at Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III's Seraglio, and learn that in the late seventeenth century "[e]very great noble wanted a dwarf as a status symbol or to please his wife, and competition among the nobility for their possession became intense."