Customer Reviews

Peter the Great: A Biography

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Overall a very nice, concise account of the life of Peter the Great. A very good introduction to those who wish to learn about this period of Russian history but have little starting background. I did think the last chapter which focuses on monuments to Peter since his death was a little dry and could easily have been edited out without affecting the overall quality of the book

This book is good for historians, no doubt, but probably not the the rest of the people, like me. I read paragraphs without knowing what I read, and it's hard to glean any interesting information. Consider, for example, this paragraph:

"In an attempt to recover Russia's prestige, gain a stronger bargaining position with the allies and ward off Turkish attacks on Ukraine, in 1695 Peter reopened hostilities ina campaign against the Turkist coastal fort of Azov at the mouth of the River Don. He dispatched two armies, the joint force of Boris Petrovich Sheremetev and the Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa to the Dnieper to delfect the Tartars from the mouth of the Don and a smaller unit consisting of the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky guards and strel'tsy on river craft down the Don to Azov itself."

I understand it, but I am not excited by all this information. The description is just too dry for my taste. I am very interested in Peter the Great because I know he went around Europe, and even worked as a carpenter. I'll find another biography elsewhere.

The best single volume biograghy of Russia's Westernizing Tsar. If you don't want to spend weeks Reading Robert Massie's "Massive" tome, this is the book for you!