Why read Peter the Great?

Book cover of Peter the Great

Book description

The Pulitzer prizewinning biography of Peter the Great, the ruler who brought Russia from darkness into light. Against the monumental canvas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and Russia, Robert K. Massie unfolds the extraordinary story of Peter the Great. A volatile feudal tsar with a taste for barbaric torture; a…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Peter the Great as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Neal W. Fandek

Author

Peter the Great is a fascinating look at an entire vanished world. The court intrigues, the military campaigns, and the foibles of royalty are all very fine and good, but it’s the author’s evocation of daily life among serfs, royals, Muscovites, Poles, and Swedes that makes this so readable.

Massey also takes the time to explain the shifting geopolitical outlooks, the Ottoman Empire in decline, the Swedish Empire in ascent, and the Polish Empire in chaos, which are at once so distant and so close to today’s geopolitics.

Russia hasn’t changed much in 300+ years. So, can we learn from…

From Neal's 3 favorite reads in 2023.