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Peter the Great (Paperback)
by Robert K. Massie
| Category:
Russian history, Europe history, Russia, Biography, Leadership |
| Market price: ¥ 198.00
MSL price:
¥ 168.00
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Author: Robert K. Massie
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Pub. in: October, 1981
ISBN: 0345298063
Pages: 928
Measurements: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01206
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0345298065
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- MSL Picks -
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.
(From quoting Critical Reasoner, USA)
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From Publisher
Enthralling . . . As fascinating as any novel and more so than most.
The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Bestseller by the author of DREADNOUGHT.
Against the monumental canvas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and Russia unfolds the magnificent story of Peter the Great, one of the most extraordinary rulers in history. Impetuous and stubborn, generous and cruel, tender and unforgiving, a man of enormous energy and complexity, Peter the Great is brought fully to life in this exceptional biography.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-07 00:00>
This is a thoroughly readable book by the same authore who, with his wife-Suzanne Massie, first brought us "Nicolas and Alexandra" (1967). "Peter the Great" first appeared in 1980 and later served as the basis for the television mini-series of the same name.
Peter I, Czar of the Russian Empire from 1682 until his death in 1725, was a major influence on making Russia what it is today. Massie's book emphasizes this idea without falling into the trap of the "great man theory of history." With such a strong dynamic charater as Peter Romanov, it surely is tempting to overemphasize his impact on history by saying that the entire course of history would have been different had Peter not become Czar. This is the great man theory of history. This theory overlooks the fact that great men do not act in a vacuum. They act in concert with other people and in the light of certain events occurring independently during their lifetimes. It is enough to say about great political leaders, that they were successful in ralleying people and toward a particular goal which would might not have been accomplished as efficiently had a particular political leader not come along at a particular time in history.
Massie's book reads just like a novel just as "Nicolas and Alexandra" did. Yet the scholarship of the book is very much intact. Learning history and reading for pleasure become one in this book.
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R.J. (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-07 00:00>
Much like Pierre Berton's great Canadian history books, Robert Massie brings history to the "people" with Peter The Great. In this long but highly readable biography, Massie illumimates the distant past of a backward nation which grew into a major European power under the energetic Peter. We read about the palace intrigues in the Kremlin in Peter's early years, his rise to power, and his historic trip "incognito" through Holland, Austria and England. A major part of this book is devoted to the Great Northern War with Sweden, and the fascinating character of Swedish king Charles XII. I knew very little about that attempted invasion of Russia, and Massie paints a vivid picture of the Swedish campaign. The author also brings us inside the Ottoman Empire and the life of the Sultans and Grand Viziers. He puts Peter's life in context with the greater world and shifting alliances of Europe.
The brutish nature of life in Russia in this era is not glossed over. So many labourers died in the construction of Peter's centrepiece city St. Petersburg, and the cruel punishments of the time are depicted. Overall, this is the type of historical biography they don't write anymore. History can be and should be written to appeal to a broader audience, and also to tell things as they were, without resorting to revisionism. Books such as this encourage readers to explore history more. |
Robert (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-07 00:00>
This book is very interesting and well-written. Mr. Massie divides Peter's life and rule into several major subdivisions and then proceeds to thoroughly discuss each one. The book traces Peter's near-revolutionary reforms in both foreign and domestic policy. These changed Russia from a poor, isolated state on Europe's periphery to a major power on the European scene.
In the sphere of foreign policy, Peter built a formidable Russian navy from almost nothing, and used it to end Swedish hegemony in the Baltic. He also opened up and/or expanded Russian trade contacts with Western Europe. On the domestic scene, Peter imported crucial Western technology (and Western Europeans) to better develop Russia.
I especially enjoyed Mr. Massie's detailed atention to the different political actors in Europe in Peter's time, and his sympathetic portrayal of Peter.
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