Peter the Great: His Life and World

Massie, Robert K; Dowling, John E

ISBN 10: 1441744495 ISBN 13: 9781441744494

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing, 2013

Synopsis

This superbly told story brings to life one of the most remarkable rulers--and men--in all of history and conveys the drama of his life and world. The Russia of Peter's birth was very different from the Russia his energy, genius, and ruthlessness shaped. Crowned co-Tsar as a child of ten, after witnessing bloody uprisings in the streets of Moscow, he would grow up propelled by an unquenchable curiosity, everywhere looking, asking, tinkering, and learning, fired by Western ideas. We see Peter in his twenties traveling "incognito" with his ambassadors to the courts of Europe; as the victorious soldier proclaimed emperor; as the simple workman at his forge; and as the visionary statesman who single-handedly created a formidable world power. Impetuous and stubborn, bawdy and stern, relentless in his perseverance, he was capable of the greatest generosity and the greatest cruelty.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"Enthralling...As fascinating as any novel and more so than most!"
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Against the monumental canvas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and Russia, unfolds the magnificent story of Peter the Great. He brought Russia from the darkness of its own Middle Ages into the Enlightenment and transformed it into the power that has its legacy in the Russia of our own century.

About the Author:

Robert K. Massie was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1929. He studied American history at Yale University and modern European history at Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes scholar. Peter the Great won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1981.

About this edition

• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1441744495
• ISBN 13: 9781441744494
• Binding: Audio CD