Robert K. Massie

An incisive account of the last of the Romanov dynasty details the love affair of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, their family, their involvement with Rasputin, and the revolution that transformed imperial Russia. Reprint.

Nicholas and Alexandra

Jeremy Anderberg

“It is one of the supreme ironies of history that the blessed birth of an only son should have proved the mortal blow. Even as the saluting cannons boomed and the flags waved, Fate had prepared a terrible story. Along with the lost battles and sunken ships, the bombs, the revolutionaries and their plots, the strikes and revolts, Imperial Russia was toppled by a tiny defect in the body of a little boy.”

I can think of only a few writers who can craft a narrative as well as what Robert Massie accomplished in his 1967 biography of the last Tsar of Russia. From the very first page I was hooked by his writing style and ability to zero in on the details of a family while also zooming out to show the national and global consequences of seemingly insignificant events.

Of course, Massie benefits from his subject being one of the most surprising, captivating, head-shaking stories in all of history.

The Romanovs had been ruling Russia for hundreds of years; when Alexander III died unexpectedly in 1894, his son Nicholas II took the throne. He married Princess Alexandra of Germany, one of Queen Victoria’s favorite granddaughters. They had four girls before producing an heir to the throne in Alexis. The happy parents were quick to discover, however, that Alexis suffered from hemophilia — in which the blood does not clot properly. In the early 20th century, it was a devastating and deadly diagnosis; a nose bleed or a sprained ankle could kill him.

And then the fabled Rasputin came along — the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing. Part holy man, part philanderer, he seduced Alexandra (not literally, contrary to some popular belief) into believing he was the only man who could help her son. Eventually, though, his voice became too loud in Russian affairs, especially in the midst of WWI and the coinciding rise in socialism/communism in greater Russia.

I’m required by my own self-imposed writing limitations to skip some important steps, but ultimately, Lenin’s regime massacred the entire family and the Romanov’s centuries-long reign came to a swift and brutal end.

When you combine a story as intensely dramatic as that with Massie’s ability to just write the hell out of it, you get a book — and characters — that will stick with you for ages. I can’t wait to read Massie’s other Russian histories. This is truly an all-time great biography.

Jeni Enjaian

I wanted to like this book more than I did. That is not to say that this is a bad book by any means. Massie's narrative flows well and he covers and immense amount of ground capably. However, the story simply did not spark for me. Little hints here and there kept me from rating this book higher or even really getting into the narrative as much as I wanted to.

After a detailed first section of the book describing Nicholas' transition from pampered Tsarevich to Tsar, Massie transitions to a middle section that wobbles back and forth over the course of the next twenty years in which all of the five royal children are born and the seeds of the revolution are sown. Only in the last quarter of the book does Massie once again slow down and narrative the terrible, tragic end of the Imperial family in painstaking detail.

Although every historian is free to choose his or her particular historiographical style, I tend to favor those who, with some exceptions, maintain a linear, chronological telling of the story. If the wobbles back and forth across the years had been thematically arranged in clearer form than Massie presents in the narrative, the wobbling would have made sense to me and I think would have united the strong first and fourth quarters much better than the middle half currently does.

For all the flaws I listed, I do think of Massie as a more than capable author, as his Pulitzer Prize indicates. These flaws stand out to me more, perhaps, because of my own historiographical training and personal preferences. This book definitely inspired me to learn even more about Russian history, of which my knowledge is sadly lacking.

Jennifer A.

The story of the love that ended an empire In this commanding book, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of Imperial Russia to tell the story of the Romanovs’ lives: Nicholas’s political naïveté, Alexandra’s obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis’s brave struggle with hemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a powerful drama of passion and history—the story of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Robert K. Massie's Catherine the Great. Praise for Nicholas and Alexandra “A larger-than-life drama.”—Saturday Review “A moving, rich book . . . [This] revealing, densely documented account of the last Romanovs focuses not on the great events . . . but on the royal family and their evil nemesis. . . . The tale is so bizarre, no melodrama is equal to it.”—Newsweek “A wonderfully rich tapestry, the colors fresh and clear, every strand sewn in with a sure hand. Mr. Massie describes those strange and terrible years with sympathy and understanding. . . . They come vividly before our eyes.”—The New York Times “An all-too-human picture . . . Both Nicholas and Alexandra with all their failings come truly alive, as does their almost storybook romance.”—Newsday “A magnificent and intimate picture . . . Not only the main characters but a whole era become alive and comprehensible.”—Harper’s

Nicholas and Alexandra

Reviews

Highlights