Customer Reviews

Vlad III Dracula: The Life and Times of the Historical Dracula

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Kurt Treptow's Vlad III Dracula: The Life And Times Of The Historical Dracula is a superbly presented, meticulously researched biography of the 15th century Romanian aristocrat known to history as "Vlad the Impaler". Treptow draws upon all extant Romanian, Turkish, Russian, and German sources to reconstruct the history of a prince who, in his own lifetime, was acclaimed a dedicated national hero and an implacable, bloody, merciless, diabolical tyrant. The informative, definitive, "reader friendly" text is enhanced with a series of appendices offering translations of principal documents concerns the history of Vlad III Dracula. Vlad III Dracula is "must" reading for anyone seeking an accurate, history-based biography of a man whose life and accomplishments have become interwoven and obscured by myth, legend, and popularized fiction.

I'm a history professor who's teaching a course on Dracula next semester. I've already ordered Florescu's Prince of Many Faces and McNally's In Search of Dracula as required reading. I've attempted to read everything in English on Dracula.

I then found Treptow. From the very first page he avoids the tendency to sensionalize Vlad III. He avoids using documents that are suspicious, like other historians. He tells us how he came to the conclusion that they are not trustworthy. He attemps to set Vlad's action within their proper context. When I finished the book, I knew that I had read the best biography on Dracula now in existence.

Buy it! If you're a serious student (casual readers may be intimidated by the massive amount of footnotes), get this one. If one could own four books on Dracula they should be the Florescu-McNally books and this one.

This volume is well-written and heavily footnoted, with an extensive bibliography; one does wish certain chapters (such as the chapter on Dracula's relations with the church,) were a bit longer, however the only real drwaback is that many of the works cited in the footnotes and bibliography are by Romanian authors, hence, not available to the majority of nonspecialist readers, however, most Romanian quotations are also rendered in English.

This volume represents the latest in Dracula scholarship. Author Treptow attempts to portary Vlad as objectively as possible, divorced from the Stoker/vampire connection.

The book itself is very handsome; black hardback cover with imitation gold leaf; color dust jacket; and an attached cloth bookmark. And the illustrations by artist Octavian Ion Penda in the style of medieval/renaissance woodcuts, in imitation of Holbein's work, add to the book's overall attractiveness. The price can't be beat, either. All-in-all, a worthy addition to Dracula studies.

Having acquired a passing interest with the "real" Dracula, it was nice to find a detailed historical account more in the vein of academics than popular culture. If you have a causal interest in Vlad then this book will be more than you want to handle. But if you are ready to deal with an in-depth consideration of the Impaler, you cannot do better than this volume.

This is a nice scholarly book just teeming with footnotes and it made me feel like I was in college again. It could have contained a little more info and a little less footnote. It very well might have some snippets that the other books don't, but McNally and Florescu books have a wealth of information for much less money. For example "In Search of Dracula" is about $10 to $15 with shipping vs. this book at $40.00 or so. It is a good book, but not worth the price for the information that it contains.

This expensive and hard-to-find book is probably the best book of Dracula in existence. It looks at the data from an unbiased perspective and shoots down a lot of the more romantic and sensationalist takes on Dracula. McNally and Florescu's book (Dracula, Prince of Many Faces) is very good but it too falls into the traps laid by the legends. Three problems that books about Dracula have:
1. There really isn't that much information on him. All that they have are a few chronicles and the German and Slavic tales, which each author has to assess for himself.
2. The man is a legendary figure and has a lot of legends that have grown up around him. People always point out the vampire legend as being utterly counter to his reputation in Romania, but many of the tales and legends about him have a distinctly supernatural and mythical air. So any information that doesn't come from the same period as Dracula has to be taken with a great deal of suspicion.
3. Communist historiography has (not surprisingly) dominated the field since they took over in Romania after WW2, and only recently have scholars been reexamining their conclusions.

Treptow is at the forefront of the reanalysis of Communist history as he questions the by now traditional takes on Dracula's economic policies and his dealing with his boyars. Much of this has survived the communist era intact, with only a slight twist. For example, Florescu and McNally take the communist era view that Dracula was trying to take state control of trade and make it out to be an attempt of the prince to give the trade advantages to Romanians. Treptow points out that this incident was taken from one line and blown out of proportion and thus doesn't need to be explained.

While he is questioning the established historiography, Treptow is still writing a biography. This isn't just a debate against the older historians. And as a biography it's quite good. It lays down the important information effectively, and explains the background to Dracula's reign quite well. His book is well bolstered by facts. At one point he provides a list of the boyars in Dracula's council and explains how the boyars didn't serve under his successors, while every single prince previously had used mostly the same nobles as his predecessors. Make of that what you will. I quite like having the information to make my own opinion, and while I'm not quite sure what to make of that fact, it does emphasize that there was something extraordinary about the man. A lot of the other biographies just take facts for granted and it's nice to have one that lays out the information for you. His life is laid out chronologically, except for the period of his kingship which is laid out by subject (boyars, church, foreign relations, etc.). Like most Romanian historians he is perhaps too ready to dismiss completely the German and Slavic tales that made Dracula out to be such a monster. Unlike some he doesn't explain them away, he just ignores them. I find this unfortunate since I feel that they reflect, at the least, a less favorable myth of Dracula. Still, it is refreshing to see a take on him that doesn't dwell on his crimes.

I really wish that this book was more readily available. It has been out of print for years and the prices for it used are ridiculous. If you can find it for cheap then snatch it up quick. It's quite a nice quality book with an embossed cover and illustrations done specially for it. Too many illustrations in fact. They take away from the writing. I should also mention that the author was apparently locked up for child molestation and was released early for writing this book. I don't know the accuracy of this (someone said that the charges were trumped up for political reasons) but it doesn't change the quality of the book. If we were only to read books written by men we approved of then most of history would be a giant blank. While he may get royalties for the book the fact that the book is out of print means that he's not getting any money from the transactions so I don't know why anyone would have ethical problems with buying this book. Regardless of the truth of this matter, this book is definitely worth it if you can find it.

First, this book was said to be in great condition (used) from Montag. When I received the book, it looked good on the outside, but the the title page was missing the bottom half. How can someone say that a book is in good condition with missing/torn pages??? NEXT, I wanted this book only for Historical purposes of the life of Vladislaus Dracula, and the information in it was not as expected. It did not have anything on the time when Vlad was held at Visegrad, Hungary for the most stable period (14 years) of his life. It did not say about his marriage or even his children. This book dealt with only his time in Romania. The book was VERY SHORT and looked as though he only cut pieces of OTHERS WORK strapped together with minimal sentences to make this book. It was not worth the money, and I bought it used.

BBC NEWS says it all:

Last Updated: Tuesday, 27 February 2007, 17:03 GMT
Paedophile freed for Dracula book



Kurt Treptow served nearly five years in jail (pic: PRO IMAGE)

An American historian jailed in Romania for paedophile offences has been released more than two years early because he wrote a book about Dracula.

According to the law, Kurt Treptow was entitled to early release because his writing counted as work in prison.

He published a book about Vlad III Dracul, the Romanian prince who inspired the Dracula legend.

Mr Treptow had served nearly five years of his seven-year sentence for "sexual relations with minors".

His lawyer, Liviu Bran, denied that he wrote the book to get out of prison, saying that a board of historians had reviewed it and concluded it was an "original scientific piece of work".

Political connections

In 2002 Mr Treptow was convicted of having sex with two underage girls and possession of child pornography. A Romanian woman accomplice, Tatiana Popovici, is still in jail.


At the time of his arrest in 2002, Mr Treptow was director of the Centre for Romanian Studies in Iasi.

It was housed in a building belonging to the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE).

Mr Treptow had been a Fulbright scholar in Romania before 1989, during the communist regime.

He wrote a book on the Romanian dictator, Ion Antonescu, who had been an ally of the Nazis during World War II.

After 1990 he was close to the left-wing government of former President Ion Iliescu and especially to Ioan Talpes, a former head of the SIE and chief presidential adviser.