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claireelyse06's review against another edition
informative
sad
slow-paced
3.0
I'm very conflicted by this book. On the one hand I learned a ton, not just about the Romanovs, but also the historical research process. On the other hand, this was a boring book. Just hear me out with this one. So the premise is that the author is exploring all of the attempts, big and small, to rescue the Romanov family after Nicholas' abdication and their imprisonment. Now as an idea, this is absolutely fascinating. You probably have some ideas already about what this may look like. But in reality (through not fault of the author), it's just a ton of meetings and telegrams.
We obviously know that the Romanovs were not rescued and ended up being brutally murdered, so I wasn't expecting to read about some crazy superhero story. But at its heart this truly is a book about politics. The author is very good at thoroughly going through the logistics of rescuing the Romanovs. The extent to which all of Europe was invested in this was surprising. But it makes sense when you think about how inbred all the royal families of Europe were. Picture that one problematic family member getting arrested, but they've already been arrested and punished so many times that no one wants to bail them out and the idea just gets thrown around like a hot potato by everyone in the family. That is more or less what this story is. And it isn't just the royal families of Europe, but there were a lot of people (specifically in England, at least according to what the author focused on) that were sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, so from that viewpoint there was a chance of an uprising had the Romanovs been brought to England. There was also how the Russian citizenry would react to a Romanov evacuation as well as the extensive geography of Russia that would make it hard to get the royal family out. Not to mention that there was also still a war going on.
The author does her best to talk about all of these things and so much more in a book that is incredibly well researched. And she even talks about her research in his book, which I LOVED. What I mean by this is she inserts sections where she talks about how specific documents were unable to be located or how different sources are important, etc. in a way that takes the reader into the historical research process and shows how nuanced it is. You think historical research is just reading stuff at a library? No. Think again. It's going through the painstaking process of looking through hundreds of archive material and then coming to the realization that some material that may be incredibly valuable is sealed to the public and researchers. It's absolutely insane. And I really appreciated the author's insight into this and how things like that have affected how people have told the story of the Romanovs.
Another thing that the author tought me in this book was how unreliable people can be, espeically when it comes to the Romanov family. There has been a ton of conspiracy and BS around the Romanov family, from members of the family surviving to people looking for attention writing completely made up accounts of the Romanov imprisonment to government officials trying not to damage the reputation of monarchs by toning down accounts of what happened or leaving things out. The study of history is a tricky business and it takes a lot of research and reading around the nuances and understanding the why behind people. And I don't think I ever appreciated that enough, as someone who is interested in studying history. The history you learn in school is very different from what the actual study of history is like. And I think that's so important to remember when we read about history or even think about it. I just really really appreciated the insight into the historical process that I got from reading this book. And I think it would be good for anyone interested in becoming a historian to learn about, no matter what kind of history they are interested in studying.
The two big issues I had with this book were how repetitive it is, which was the nature of the story, not anything the author did I think. At a certain point it becomes a little tedius to read about all the telegrams sent and all of the similar plans made that didn't come to fruition. There were also a lot of characters that were hard to keep track of. So towards the middle there were definitely parts where I was kind of losing my mind just trying to get through it. But objectively, this book had a TON of good information and I am glad that I read it. It's incredibly insightful and educational.
The epilouge was extremely well written in my opinion and made it worth the read. Nothing new was addedd, I just found the writing style nice. I feel like that just needed to be said.
All in all, I wouldn't reccomend this book to the average person because they will most likely get bored, but if you are interested in how politics and international relations works, then this might be a book for you. And when I say politics were talking about all kinds of politics. Alliances, public opinion, war, etc. This wasn't a bad book, it's just a topic that sounds interesting but gets boring when you read 300+ pages on it. I will say though, while I was reading it, I thought it would make a very good documentary. The tone was at times dramatic in the way that documentaries are and I think that if it was made into a documentary it would be very good (I would certainly watch it, that's for sure).
We obviously know that the Romanovs were not rescued and ended up being brutally murdered, so I wasn't expecting to read about some crazy superhero story. But at its heart this truly is a book about politics. The author is very good at thoroughly going through the logistics of rescuing the Romanovs. The extent to which all of Europe was invested in this was surprising. But it makes sense when you think about how inbred all the royal families of Europe were. Picture that one problematic family member getting arrested, but they've already been arrested and punished so many times that no one wants to bail them out and the idea just gets thrown around like a hot potato by everyone in the family. That is more or less what this story is. And it isn't just the royal families of Europe, but there were a lot of people (specifically in England, at least according to what the author focused on) that were sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, so from that viewpoint there was a chance of an uprising had the Romanovs been brought to England. There was also how the Russian citizenry would react to a Romanov evacuation as well as the extensive geography of Russia that would make it hard to get the royal family out. Not to mention that there was also still a war going on.
The author does her best to talk about all of these things and so much more in a book that is incredibly well researched. And she even talks about her research in his book, which I LOVED. What I mean by this is she inserts sections where she talks about how specific documents were unable to be located or how different sources are important, etc. in a way that takes the reader into the historical research process and shows how nuanced it is. You think historical research is just reading stuff at a library? No. Think again. It's going through the painstaking process of looking through hundreds of archive material and then coming to the realization that some material that may be incredibly valuable is sealed to the public and researchers. It's absolutely insane. And I really appreciated the author's insight into this and how things like that have affected how people have told the story of the Romanovs.
Another thing that the author tought me in this book was how unreliable people can be, espeically when it comes to the Romanov family. There has been a ton of conspiracy and BS around the Romanov family, from members of the family surviving to people looking for attention writing completely made up accounts of the Romanov imprisonment to government officials trying not to damage the reputation of monarchs by toning down accounts of what happened or leaving things out. The study of history is a tricky business and it takes a lot of research and reading around the nuances and understanding the why behind people. And I don't think I ever appreciated that enough, as someone who is interested in studying history. The history you learn in school is very different from what the actual study of history is like. And I think that's so important to remember when we read about history or even think about it. I just really really appreciated the insight into the historical process that I got from reading this book. And I think it would be good for anyone interested in becoming a historian to learn about, no matter what kind of history they are interested in studying.
The two big issues I had with this book were how repetitive it is, which was the nature of the story, not anything the author did I think. At a certain point it becomes a little tedius to read about all the telegrams sent and all of the similar plans made that didn't come to fruition. There were also a lot of characters that were hard to keep track of. So towards the middle there were definitely parts where I was kind of losing my mind just trying to get through it. But objectively, this book had a TON of good information and I am glad that I read it. It's incredibly insightful and educational.
The epilouge was extremely well written in my opinion and made it worth the read. Nothing new was addedd, I just found the writing style nice. I feel like that just needed to be said.
All in all, I wouldn't reccomend this book to the average person because they will most likely get bored, but if you are interested in how politics and international relations works, then this might be a book for you. And when I say politics were talking about all kinds of politics. Alliances, public opinion, war, etc. This wasn't a bad book, it's just a topic that sounds interesting but gets boring when you read 300+ pages on it. I will say though, while I was reading it, I thought it would make a very good documentary. The tone was at times dramatic in the way that documentaries are and I think that if it was made into a documentary it would be very good (I would certainly watch it, that's for sure).
abronstein's review against another edition
challenging
informative
4.0
feels well-researched as author goes into perspective of how she came across documents like diaries, notes, and memoirs. Reading this book it's astonishing how they could be family one minute and the next world leaders.
laureltree13's review against another edition
4.0
As someone with an interest in the Romanovs; I found the almost day to day account of their lives during the beginning of the revolution to their final days fascinating.
filaret526's review against another edition
3.0
Very well researched. A lot of detail about plans that were out there to save ( or not save) the Tsar and his family. For anyone who wants a complete picture of the last days of the Romanovs, this book is a must
gmrva's review against another edition
5.0
The historian in me loved this. It was equally about the family and the historian’s adventures tracking down sources.
katiehixson's review against another edition
2.0
This has a lot of excellent and well researched information, but it was so dry and descriptive that it was a a slog to get through. Since it has a good rating here, my expectation is that I simply didn’t jive with the author’s writing style.