Peter the Great

A TITAN OF HISTORY, a maker of the modern world, a man of immense fascination, Peter the Great is brought fully to life in this huge, richly conceived and executed book—the magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning biography by the author of Nicholas and Alexandra. It is a book that brings alive as well the medieval Russia of Peter's birth and the very different Russia his energy, genius and ruthlessness shaped, a book that makes vivid the texture of Russian life as lived by prince and peasant in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. At the same time, It projects the Europe to which Peter was so powerfully drawn—the France of Louis XIV and Louis XV, the England of William III and George I, the Sweden of Peter's mortal enemy Charles XII and the Sublime Porte of the Turkish Sultan.

But above all, we see Peter himself through his infinitely crowded years: the child of ten, crowned co-tsar after having witnessed (and been endangered by) bloody uprisings in the streets of Moscow and inside the Kremlin; the adolescent in bitter confrontation with his ambitious half-sister, the Regent Sophia; the young giant in his twenties (six feet seven inches tall) traveling "incognito" with his ambassadors to the cities and courts of Europe, propelled by an unquenchable curiosity, everywhere looking, asking, tinkering, learning, fired by Western ideas. We see Peter the victorious soldier proclaimed Emperor; the simple workman at his forge; the visionary statesman who singlehandedly created a formidable world power.

And we witness Peter's monumental and ultimately triumphant struggle to bring Russia out of its imprisoning medievalism—the people profoundly resisting change, the Tsar inspired, driven, to change everything, the society, the government, the economy, even the minutiae of polite social behavior: printing the first newspaper, creating factories, establishing schools, hospitals, museums, libraries, even himself editing and publishing books.

We follow Peter as he transforms an ill-armed and untrained rabble into the army that destroys the most efficient military force of Europe in a twenty-year war that pits hint against the daring, brilliant and seemingly Invincible Charles XII of Sweden, whose ignominious defeat at Poltava heralded a crucial change in the balance of European power.

And we follow Peter's obsession with the sea, from his first glimpse of a small sailboat, through his shipyard training In Holland, through the burgeoning of his naval genius. he pushes to capture port cities on the Black Sea and the Baltic and as he builds a Russian Navy. We observe his determination to creme, out of a northern swamp, at any cost, his magnificent and noble capital of St Petersburg.

Massie gives us, full scale, this man of enormous energy and complexity—impetuous and stubborn, bawdy and stern, relentless in his perseverance constantly on the move, inspecting organizing, encouraging, criticizing, commanding, capable of the greatest generosity and the greatest cruelty. We see him with those he loved most—with Catherine, the robust yet gentle peasant who becomes his loving mistress and later his second wife and Empress (and who succeeded him); with Menshikov, the charming, bold and unscrupulous Prince of obscure origins who through Peter's friendship becomes one of the richest and most powerful men in Europe We witness Peter's tormented and fatal relationship with his son Alexis We see his ruthless temper, his sudden violent anger his crushing of all who oppose him. And we see the loyalty, the passionate concern for his family. his friends and for the new Russia that was his handiwork.

His story is superbly told. The special qualities that Robert Massie brought to his greatly acclaimed Nicholas and Alexandra—historical accuracy and grasp combined with the biographer's rare genius for expressing the essence and drama of extraordinary lives—are here put to the service of an even larger and more resonant subject, the life and world of one of the most remarkable rulers—and men—in all of history.