5 comments about Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life.

1. I must admit; I didn't get very far, but this book is a self serving pack of lies by an apologist for the intransigence of the Arab world. For example, she refers to the "forced migration" of 1948 without ever mentioning that the ones doing the forcing were Arabs who promised their people that if they would get out they would "push the Jews into the sea". Nor does she mention the origin of the name "Palestinian" (hint: it is a Hebrew name).
   
   The saddest thing about the Arab world is that 1000 years ago they had the most advanced civilization on earth, and entirely due to problems of their own making they now preside over one giant hell hole.
   
   But if she came out and admitted this the Hashemite family would be in danger of losing their position of privilege in Transjordan.
   
   I would recommend that anyone who reads this book should also read "Warrior" by Ariel Sharon. At least he knows the history of Israel, Syria, and Egypt.



2. Here is a glimpse into Middle East history from someone who was there! My own family members have enjoyed reading it as much as I have; I think shall too!



3. Leap of Faith is interesting from the young all American becomes Queen standpoint. It really is amazing that a fairly regular young American woman gains the attention of the King of Jordan and becomes Queen.
   
   It is too bad she was not willing to be more real in her telling of a great story.
   
   The book ends up preaching about Queen Noor's view of the political world and quickly becomes tiresome and boring.
   
   It could have been a very exciting story given her exciting life but she had to go preach to us instead.



4. Unfortunately the autobiography is boring and somewhat distant and impersonal. Actually, overall the writing is uninspired and quite frankly, flat. Queen Noor, obviously a beautiful, intelligent, well-educated woman uses the book as a platform for spouting some pretty blatant untruths about the modern history of the Middle East. I guess I should have expected that, but it was disappointing nonetheless. I might have gritted my teeth and gotten past her politics if the love story was interesting. But it wasn't simply because the writing was so unemotional and disconnected. As I read the book, it was as if I could hear someone speaking in a monotone voice and it was almost sleep-inducing.



5. This biography is not great literature. It's centered in the most complex and violent regions of our times but rarely scratches the surface. Noor's diplomacy in describing people and events - always the high road, even in the midst of deceit and betrayal - is maddeningly constant and obscures rather than reveals. So what's to like about the book? It's an extraordinary story of a young western woman who embraces the east: it's people, culture, religion and thought. It's the story of her love for King Hussein, who in a world of the powerful, is largeless powerless but for his integrity in the struggle for peace. Her perspective, is that of the Palestinian Arab. Their voice needs to be heard. This book is a thoughtful start.

5 comments about The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke.

1. The Red Prince is subtitled The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke, but this is a biography of far more than one individual. This able work by Timothy Snyder does much to illuminate the history of Ukraine and Central and Eastern Europe during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
   
   When Wilhelm von Habsburg was born in 1895 he was a minor member of a minor branch of the Habsburg Dynasty, which had been a dominating force in European politics for 500 years. Wilhelm's immediate family were not in the main line of succession and thus lived out of the public eye as much as was possible for people known as Imperial and Royal Archdukes and Archduchesses. Wilhelm's father seems to have originated a family streak of rebelliousness, when he apparently began to make plans to establish himself as King of Poland before that country had even regained its independence. Wilhelm, as his father's youngest son, had to go further afield to rebel, and he chose the province of Ukraine, a region divided between Russia and Austria-Hungary. Before and during World War I Wilhelm was an advocate for Ukrainian independence and for some surprisingly left wing politics, and during the tumultuous period after World War I at one point seemed poised to become the country's King. Conflict between Poland and the Soviet Union put an end to hopes for Ukrainian independence, and Wilhelm was relegated to the life of a playboy in Paris, enjoying love affairs with both sexes until a financial scandal forced him to return to Austria. Then during the 1930s and 1940s Wilhelm dabbled in right wing politics, switched to anti-Nazi activities during World War II, and then in the early years of the Cold War apparently worked with Western countries spying on the Soviet Union. This led to his arrest and imprisonment by the Soviets, and he died in prison in 1948.
   
   However colorful his life, Wilhelm von Hapsburg would not have merited a biography solely on his own account. He apparently left few letters or other written records, and there seem to be very few photographs as well. What makes The Red Prince so important is the good coverage Snyder provides of the complicated history of Ukraine. The region slipped back and forth between Austria-Hungary, Poland, and the Soviet Union until finally gaining independence in 1991. Snyder draws many excellent parallels between the nationalist politics pre- and post- World Wars I and II, the political turmoil that has plagued the former Soviet Union and its satellites since the end of the Cold War, and the kind of universal supra-nationalistic politics practiced by the Habsburgs and now by the European Union. The coverage of the Orange Revolution of 2004, when Ukraine took a decisive turn away from dictatorship towards democracy, is especially interesting.
   
   Although Wilhelm himself seems to have left few written records, so that readers will not feel they know much about him personally, Snyder was able to recreate the lives of his parents, siblings, nieces and nephews and other relations. He reveals them to have been interesting and intelligent people with independent views, a far cry from the habitual stereotype of the Habsburgs as insufferably inbred mediocrities. Snyder also gives some fascinating portraits of some of Wilhelm's associates like Trebitsch Lincoln, who deserves a biography of his own, though it would probably be considered too bizarre to be true.



2. Many of us are nostalgic about the Hababurgs, especially when we have considered the awful consequences of the decline of a multinational empire which kept squabbling nationalities and would-be-nationalities from murdering one another for many decades. Of course the Habsburgs also bear resp0nsibility for a policy of divide and conquer which made nationalistic rivalries even worse. But still better a Habsburg ruler than a Fascist or a Communist.
   
   Prof. Snyder, an expert on the nationalities question in the lands of central Europe and the Old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, is the perfect man to write a book on a wayward Habsburg archduke, Wilhelm, and his involvement for several decades in pro-Ukrainian national projects, all of which came to nothing until long after his death with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989-91.
   Snyder writes with a literary verve which makes it hard to put this book down, even for people who wouldn't know the difference between a Slovak and a Slovene if their lives depended on it.



3. To me this book, which aims at explaining the evolution of political boundaries in Eastern Europe over the past 100 years, is muddled as a result of the author's use of a particularly mobile and feckless archduke of the Habsburg line for the connecting thread of his main, and more serious, history.
   
   I think Professor Snyder goes overboard in his admiration for the ill-fated Habsburgs, especially Wihelm. All things seem to be taken in the most positive light and excused, such as Wihelm's involvement in a lurid financial shakedown scandal in France and his early friendship with the Nazis. Facts easily drift into conjecture at many points, especially with the material related to the thoughts and motives of the Red Prince.
   
   I see nothing to admire in Wihelm nor do I think it any bad thing that this collection of rich, indolent, hereditary rulers, known as the Habsburg Dynasty, is no longer.
   
   Professor Snyder, who is a real expert on issues related to the politics of this area of the world, would have been better off telling his story directly and not by means of the ignoble life of this one archduke.



4. This is one of those books that you pick up on a whim and then the next day wonder why on earth you bought it, and then, once you begin to read it, realize that you got lucky. The Red Prince, in actuality, is several books in one: a biography of the eccentric Archduke Wilhelm von Hapsburg and members of his family, a brief history of the evolution of the country we know today as Ukraine, a eulogy for the Hapsburg Empire, and a survey of the changes wrought in Europe during the 19th and 20th Centuries as nations became states and continental war gave way to European union. Professor Snyder has a fascinating story to tell and he tells it well. His prose is engaging, his analysis insightful, and his arguments persuasive. At times, his metaphors are a bit over wrought and strained. For example, his reference on p. 272 to the impact that global warming and rising water levels in the Adriatic Sea will have on old Hapsburg sea charts seems pointless, other than perhaps satisfying the author's desire to display his awareness of the environmental fad du jour. But this is a minor quibble. If you want to fill a gap in your education and learn a little something about Central Europe, buy this book.



5. This book has two big problems. The first is that the subject of the book isn't worth a book of this length and depth. The second is that the author often "makes good" the lack of depth in the subject by speculation and theory.
   
   Wilhelm von Habsburg was never a figure of consequence. A mnior member of the imperial family, he kept himself busy in Imperial Austria by funding nationalist ukranian groups working apparantly toward the delusion that he could make a throne for himself outside Austria.
   
   After the fall of Habsburg Austria, he became a professional political opportunist attaching himself to anyone in Europe who wanted him. His personal life was a scandalous mess and he spent his final days in a soviet prison.
   
   The author and the work far too often invented excuses for Wilhelm. But sometimes a lowlife political opportunist is no more than that. The author never quite wants to admit That Wilhelm didn't believe in anything except using everything and everyone around him to get himself ahead.
   
   In some ways, Wilhelm toward the end was the third man's Harry Lime come to life. An amoral preditor playing on the cold war border who like Lime pressed his luck until it ran out.
   
   The book might have worked either at about 1/3rd of its length. Or it might have worked had the history of eastern europe it contains been pulled out. As it is, its a mess. The craft of the writing and research involved are both excellent but they can't save what was a very flawed idea for a book.
   
   The final mistake of the author is to repeat the old nonsense that the EU is some sort of return to Habsburg ideals. People who say such things have little understanding of how Imperial Austria was governed and are usually caught up in daydreams of Vienna at the turn of the century.

5 comments about Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King.

1. this is a great book. the photos inside are great and its quality is amazing



2. Excellent thorough book. Easy read full of great
   info on the kings personal life



3. I used to be fascinatged by these portraits of historical figures, but this one left me bored and skeptical. I have read a few of Ms Fraser's other books and enjoyed them. Particularly her Marie Antoinette. But this one I found dull by the second chapter and now after chapter 7 have set it aside to move on to something else. I will go back and finish, and if my review changes, I will be back to amend this review, but I just felt there is so much interesting history to touch with Louis XIV and this book ignores a lot of it. In addition, her recreations of events as if she is there left me skeptical of their veracity. Obviously this is well researched, but does she really know that court "rushed" to someones side". I guess I shoudl have deduced form the title that this woudl really focus on Louis love life. I just was hoping for something else. There is enough television and movies telling us about the love lives of famous individuals of the present and past. I was more interested in his intellectual persuits, and his accomplishments in architecture and development of France that earned him the nickname of the Sun King.



4. Antonia Fraser crafts a masterful biography spanning the life of Louis XIV -- using the relationships with the various women in his life (mother, wife, mistresses, daughter in-law, granddaughter in-law) as the pattern that she weaves her tapestry around.
   
   Detailed but not overwhelming, she paints an enthralling picture of the Sun King and those in the court who orbited him. A great profile regardless of whether you know little about thi time period or you're seeking to enhance the depth of knowledge that you have.



5. This book was a good factual read on Louis XIV. Anyone with an interest in Louis (or just the era) will enjoy this book. I found no factual errors.

5 comments about The Princes in the Tower.

1. This book has a bibliography but no footnotes or source citations. If you are a serious history student, don't waste your time on this book. It isn't worth the paper it's written on.



2. Alison Weir's thorough research is evident in every chapter. She first summarizes the events and the dispute between the Houses of York and Lancaster. Then using obscure documents and letters, she develops a detailed timeline of events following Edward IV's death. She adds to it her historian's sensibility. There is no doubt in her mind, that Richard III was directly responsible for the Princes' deaths. I must read other opinions as well, but her case is convincing.
   
   The only challenge to the book was that she assumes the reader knows the York and Lancaster followers well. I had to go back many times to figure out players' allegience.



3. Alison Weir has written countless popular histories about medieval and Tudor England. In this 1992 book she explores the murders of King Edward V who was 12 and his younger brother the Duke of York who was 10 years old. The saying from Sir Walter Scott goes, "What a tangled web we weave when first we plan to deceive!" How true this maxim is in the complicated spider's web of conspiracy, usurpations and dark plotting which occurred in fifteenth century England!
   When the Lancasterian King of England Edward IV died in 1483 his throne was assumed by Edward V his son by Elizabeth Wydville. She and her children would be forced to take sanctuary in Westminster after the seizure of the throne by the wily and intelligent plotter Gloucester. (Richard III).Richard III was one of the many brothers of the late King. Weir asserts that Richard had the boys in the tower murdered! He did so to sweep away any threats to his throne. Richard even wanted to marry the lads sister the fetchingly beautiful Elizabeth of York. This marriage did not occur due to the scandal over the foul deed done in the Tower of London. Many of his contemporaries believed that Richard was the man responsible for the murder. Later it was Sir Thomas More and Shakespeare who linked Richard to the foul deed. Despite historical revisionism the author believes that this is the correct view of what happened.
   It would be Henry VII who would wed Elizabeth of York. As a Lancasterian marrying a Yorkist he ended the rivalry between the families preventing a renewal of the War of the Roses. Henry was the first of the Tudor monarchs who continued to reign in Great Britain until the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. Henry defeated and killed Richard at Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485 to become king. His strong mother Margaret of Beaufort was overjoyed. Henry was a strong leader who was a good king. Henry later defeated rebellions led against him by imposters who claimed to be the Duke of York. Such claims were bogus!
   Weir notes that the supposed bodies of Edward V and the Duke of York were discovered in the Tower of London during the reign of Charles II. This finding is disputed. Her assertion that Richard III is the man responsible for the murders is also a bone of contention.
   As a neophyte to the controversy I believe Alison Weir makes a plausible case for the culprit being Richard III. This book has convinced me to read more iin this fascinating topic.



4. It sure won't answer the centuries old question of the demise of Edward IV's boys, but surely will sway you in the direction of one culprit...Detailed, and well researched, albeit somewhat biased, it gives a perfect picture of the era, prevailing conditions, backrounds etc etc..If you like history, you'll enjoy this. Bottomline though, whoever the guilty party may be, two young kids were murdered horridly by some power hungry monster..My heart goes to the kids...Sad...



5. In this painstaking work of meticulous historical research Alison Weir thoroughly uncovers the facts behind one of English history's greatest murder mysteries.
   
   Weir reconstructs the entire chain of events leading to the murders of the young princes, the 13 year old Edward V, and his brother the ten year old Richard, Duke of York.
   
   She thoroughly disproves the claims of those whom she calls the 'revisionist' historians, those who favour Richard III and aim to exonerate him of the murders and to portray him as something of a saint.
   
   Richard III, as Duke of Gloucester, had supported his older brother Edward IV loyally during the later stages of the War of Roses.
   
   During Edward's reign he proved himself to be courageous in battle, charming and remarkably capable as well as ruthless.
   
   On the sudden death of his brother in 1483, he became Protector of the kingdom, and guardian of his young nephew, Edward V. He speedily arrested and executed the relatives and supporters of the boy's mother Queen Elizabeth Wydville, and induced her to hand over her younger son, the little Duke of York, who was lodged in the Tower with his brother. In June Richard assumed the crown and the tow boys were never seen again.
   
   Weir reveals why Richard's brother the Duke of Buckingham could not have murdered the princes alone, for several reasons. He, Buckingham, was not in the right place at the right time and had no authority to gain access to them. If the obstacles had been somehow overcome, Richard III would have speedily found out about it, and accused Buckingham of the murders but Richard never did so even after Buckingham was tried for treason, and it would have been politically advantageous to label Buckingham as the murderer, thus diverting suspicion against King Richard himself.
   
   The author gathers all the facts recorded in the surviving contemporary sources and points out how beyond this, there is a vast amount of compelling circumstantial evidence that substantiates the known and leaves no room for any alternative theories.
   
   Most of the facts were recorded by Sir Thomas More. The convenient deaths of the princes, so soon after Richard III's accession seems too fortuitous and too coincidental.
   
   It would have been to Richard's advantage had he not ordered their deaths, to present them alive had they in fact been son, or to produce their bodies for a decent burial but he did no such thing.
   
   Richard III never made a statement disclaiming all responsibility for the deaths of the princes, and offering a plausible explanation. for their disappearance.
   Furthermore she records the discovery 300 years later of two bodies in the tower who showed marks of having been murdered who could only have been the princes.
   
   The play by Shakespeare, Richard III - Criterion Collection was based on the Chronicles of Raphael Holinshed, which was based on the works of Edward Hall, which was taken almost word for word from Thomas More's history.
   
   Between the More and Shakespeare, more was done by nay other writers to publicize Richard III's evil reputation. More's history is a moral tale about tyranny.
   Shakespeare's play is a study of evil.
   
   Weir's deeply researched and meticulously shows that More's history of Richard III was not far off the mark.

No comments about King Hussein of Jordan: A Political Life.

3 comments about The King and the Cowboy: Theodore Roosevelt and Edward the Seventh, Secret Partners.

1. David Fromkin is one of my favorite historians. After a stint as an expert in International Relations, who wrote on the subject (The Independence of Nations), Fromkin settled down as a historian, particularly of the various crises surrounding the First World War. Fromkin's best work is without question his 1989 opus A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. A well researched and detailed study of the emergence of the modern Middle East, it is an example of everything history should. Even his weaker historical works, such as The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of the Twenty-first Century and Kosovo Crossing: American Ideals Meet Reality On The Balkan Battlefields, are illuminating and well written.
   
   Fromkin's last work, 2004's Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?, was one of his better books. Although it was based primarily on secondary sources, it distilled a mass of scholarship to offer a lucid and intelligent account of the Great War's outbreak.
   
   Fromkin's new book "The King and the Cowboy" can be seen as a prequel of sorts to "Europe's Last Summer". Most of the latter book is a detailed account of the immediate origins of the 1914 crisis. In "The King and the Cowboy", Fromkin traces the emerging of the war coalitions as Germany's power in the continent rose, leading its neighbors to align against it.
   
   Unfortunately, "The King and the Cowboy" is the weakest of the six Fromkin books I have read. Like "Europe's Last Summer", it is based almost entirely on secondary sources. Unlike "Summer", it neither summarizes the findings of a vast literature for a popular audience, nor forwards a challenging thesis. All that the book offers is a triple biography of Edward the seventh, King of England, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Theodore Roosevelt, and a problematic - and razor thin - thesis trying to tie them together.
   
   The beginning is agreeable enough; Fromkin offers a biography of Edward the VII, who was born as Albert Edward, and was known to everyone as "Bertie". Fromkin juxtaposes Edward's life with that of his nephew, Wilhelm ("Willy"). Contrasting them makes sense, as their antagonistic personal relations - Willy had hated Edward - mirrored the relations between their countries, which grew further and further apart. Unfortunately, Fromkin never really delves beneath the skin of his characters, and we are left unable to understand Willy's hatred of his uncle. Bertie's feelings towards his cousin remain equally mysterious. Fromkin's discussion of the political realities of the 19th century is quite interesting, but unfortunately all too brief - Fromkin's focus is on the sexual escapades of Willy and Bertie - which, beyond informing us who that the shenanigans of the British Royal family did not start with Prince Charles and Princess D, do not tell us much.
   
   Nonetheless, the biographies of Edward and Wilhelm at least connect to each other. Why Fromkin decided to cram American president's Theodore Roosevelt's life into the same book is a mystery to me. The subtitle declares Roosevelt ("Teddy") and Edward to have been "secret partners" - so secret was their partnership that they didn't know they had one. Fromkin brings no evidence that Edward and Roosevelt saw themselves as partners, thought about each other in friendly terms, or even thought much about each other. As far as I can tell, they have never met.
   
   So what is the link? Apparently, Roosevelt and Edward cooperated in aligning the United States with Great Britain and the latter with France, in a grand coalition against Germany. Fromkin also gives Roosevelt a lot of credit for the conference in Algeciras in which Germany tried unsuccessfully to split France from its European allies. Edward is also, rather inexplicably, given much credit for the joining together of Great Britain and France.
   
   This strikes me as wrong on all accounts. The relationship between the United States and Great Britain grew warmer before Roosevelt rose to power; His Secretary of State, John Hay, started the process while serving in President McKinley's cabinet (see Warren Zimmermann's First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power, a far better account of Roosevelt and of the British-American rapprochement)
   
   Was the successful (that is, pro-French) outcome Algeciras conference Roosevelt's handiwork? I think not. Germany's statesmen felt that they could ply France's allies away from it by pointing out France's violation of its treaty obligation in Morocco. But Morocco, as Roosevelt informed Wilhelm, was simply not important enough to effect anyone's strategic calculations (p. 198). And the strategic calculus of the early twentieth century was very simple. Germany was a rising and aggressive power; if it was not already Europe's most powerful state, it would be so soon. Fearing its aggression, its neighbors hang together desperately. Nothing France could have done in Morocco, an insignificant country, was worth splitting away from it.
   
   Did Edward VII play a large part in Britain's foreign policy? Again, I doubt it. Fromkin does argue that "the actions of monarchs still had an impact [in the 1900s]" (p. 218), but the only way in which Edward seemed to have influenced British policy was by getting his friends appointed to high rank in the Foreign office. This is not an achievement to slight, but Fromkin does not offer evidence that Edward's men were more pro-French than the rest of Britain's diplomats. Again, it seems that the rise of Germany, and especially Germany's construction of a great fleet, pushed Britain into France's arms. Fromkin also argues that Edward's speech in Paris wooed the French; But surely the French, having lost Alsace and Lorraine to Prussia in the last war were positively disposed towards the United Kingdom - the enemy of their enemy - anyway.
   
   I found Fromkin's thesis of a "partnership" between Edward VII and Theodore Roosevelt far fetched, and his research far from satisfactory. Ultimately, only Fromkin usual graceful writing salvages this otherwise hopeless book.



2. This book's subject has the potential to be a really fascinating study of the pre-World War I diplomatic maneuvers that led to the close Anglo-American relationship that has now lasted for a century. Unfortunately, David Fromkin has not given the material the close scrutiny and examination required. He has relied on secondary sources, quoting from them extensively, so that in some chapters he almost appears to be paraphrasing them.
   
   King Edward VII's diplomatic efforts deserve study. He played a major role in the Anglo-French rappprochement in the first decade of the twentieth century, and also assisted in helping Britain establish a better relationship with Russia. His was more of a social role, however, the real work was done by the professional diplomats. Theodore Roosevelt, similarly, deserves more credit than he gets for his diplomatic efforts. He was far more than the swashbuckling Rough Rider of legend.
   
   Unfortunately, Fromkin's superficial treatment does neither man justice and actually perpetuates some of the stereotypes of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was a far more subtle ruler than his reputation (admittedly self-inflicted) admits. Fromkin also makes a number of small but noticeable errors of fact: King Charles I was not a Roman Catholic, Victoria became Queen in June 1837 but wasn't crowned until a year later, and while Victoria definitely had living great-grandchildren in 1930, that is hardly worthy of notice. (Some of her great-grandchildren were still alive in the 1980s!)
   
   Fromkin's books on the Middle East are scholarly and worthy. This work, along with his last book on the outbreak of World War I, both suffer from a lack of scholarly rigor.



3. I am not too familiar with this author but I found this book to be highly superficial in nature. The book is 259 pages long including the index but it really doesn't get to the crux of the subject matter until page 184. There is a chapter of that and then we are back to the superficial set of biographies. Until we get page 184, we are treated with lightweight biographies of Edward VII, Kaiser Wilhelm and Theodore Roosevelt. None of the biographical entries are noteworthy or insightful to anyone who are familiar to these figures. Of course, a pure novice of history would gained something by reading these lightweight introductory material. The element of this book is the Algecira Conference of 1906 and like the rest of the material, it also got a pretty lightweight treatment geared toward the super novice level of readers. This was a pretty complex conference but the author gave an easy to read and not too detail account. I am not really convince that there was a real partnership involved here, just a opportunity to keep Germany out of that region that benefit both the British Empire and the United States.
   
   One of the previous reviewers wrote glowing terms of this author's previous work but felt disappointed by this book. I haven't read any of this author's previous books and I don't think I'll make it a priority to do so after reading this weak effort.
   
   I would recommended this book only if you know totally nothing about the lives of Edward VII, Kaiser Wilhelm and Theodore Roosevelt since their biographies appears to weight more then the actual conference itself.

5 comments about The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn.

1. Anne Boleyn continues to fascinate. A woman of wit, intelligence and a feminist in her time. She won a king's heart but incurred his wrath. A life cut short, a child deprived of her mother. A true tale of intrigue, corruption and manipulation. A cast of interesting characters vieing for power, wealth and fame.



2. Anne Boleyn was undoubtedly one history's most fascinating woman. She was not conventionally beautiful, she had a sharp-tongued, acidic personality, and she engendered both obsessive love and implacable hatred in the people around her. She also was caught in the middle of a bitter, bloody war between the traditional Catholics and the Reform Protestants. As a result, trying to know the "real" Anne Boleyn is a hard task indeed, as contemporary accounts are extremely biased. In the end, we don't even really know which drawings or portraits are accurate.
   But Eric Ives has taken up this enormously difficult task of finding the woman behind the legend, and his book will probably be the standard for years to come. He has carefully considered all his sources, including the ones that are obviously extremely biased, and weighed what is probably true and what is not. He has started from scratch, using only contemporary (meaning, Tudor era) sources, and spends an entire chapter weighing which sources can be trusted, and which cannot. For instance, Eustace Chapuys's accounts are heavily biased towards Katherine of Aragon, but they also give a great timeline of the divorce proceedings. He spends anther chapter devoted to which portraits or images of Anne is likely to be the most accurate. His conclusion: a ring that Anne's daughter Elizabeth wore that had a cameo of herself and her mother. Little details like that make the book more human, for while Henry tried the best he could to erase Anne from history, it is clear that Elizabeth never forgot her mother. Ives also uses the poetry of Thomas Wyatt, an early admirer of Anne who seems to have always carried a torch for her, to great effect.
   Ives' tone is that of a detached scholar, and while he is obviously fascinated by Anne, and eager to dispel the more vicious myths about her, this is no hagiography. He reports the ugly side of Anne's personality -- her imperiousness, her tendency to kick people while they were down. Of Katherine of Aragon, Anne once coldly remarked that she "wished all Spaniards were at the bottom of the sea." Yet the overall picture of Anne is that of a remarkable woman. Intelligent, independent, radical in her belief of the Protestant Reform movement, a mover and shaker.
   That such an intelligent woman could fall so fast in fortune speaks volumes both of the cruelty of Henry VIII, the machinations of Thomas Cromwell (the book's villain), and the status of women in Anne's time. Henry loved Anne because she was outspoken, witty, elusive, and cultured (she spent her adolescence in the French royal court). But once they were married, she was expected to start bearing sons, and to tolerate infidelity. She was also expected to keep her nose out of political and religious affairs. She could not do any of the above. Her fall (three weeks from arrest to execution) is documented with astonishing detail.
   Warning: although Ives' book is extremely well-written, it is not an "easy" read. It is extremely scholarly in tone, and if you want a more general overview of Henry VIII's wives, then Alison Weir, Antonia Fraser, and David Starkey have all written excellent books on the subject. The middle section, which goes into rather arcane detail about Anne's interest in arts, culture, court life, interior decorating and religious reform is on the dry side.
   My other criticism of Ives is that in his eagerness to paint a picture of a larger conspiracy to dethrone Anne by Thomas Cromwell, the religious conservatives, and the ever-ambitious Seymour clan, he almost lets Henry VIII off the hook. In the end, one person could have stopped Anne the "beloved wife" from such a cruel fate and that was her husband. But despite these flaws, Ives' level of research goes above and beyond the call of duty. Anne finally had her fair day in court, and no doubt she would have been very proud.



3. This is a must-read for any Anne Boleyn fan, who wants to learn more about her life. This book lists many intricate details about Anne's life at court, which I found fascinating!



4. i loved this book, very accurate and insightful, great read for all anne boleyn fans.



5. I became fascinated with Anne Boleyn after watching The Tudors and The Other Boleyn Girl. I really wanted to find out the factual truth about her. I thought this book was fairly easy to read and the author seemed very interested in writing as close to the factual truth as possible.
   
   I definitely am interested in reading more about this period.

5 comments about Nicholas and Alexandra.

1. I read this book many years ago and have never forgotten it, and I just recently purchased a copy of my own. Robert Massie is an excellent writer who makes this book memorable for the fun and loving family that the Romanovs were and their terrible, tragic end. I'm now collecting more books on the Romanov dynasty and the individual people who made up this fascinating family. For anyone with an interest, this is the place to start.



2. nicholas and alexandra should never had become czar and crazina of russia.nicholas was just to weak spirit and alexandra to strong without know the real russia people.she saw russian as childern who needed to be told how to run their lives by the papa czar.she hide her son illness and brought in a sexual twisted man of god into her family,ruin the romanov's relationship with it's people.stopping changes that would give citzen russian say in their country.in the end the people turn on the romanov's every thing end tragical.



3. In 2000, there was much talk about the "most important person of the 20th Century." My choice was always Gavrilo Princip, the young Bosnian assassin who killed Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, igniting World War I, which caused the Russian Revolution, Communism, and the Treaty of Versailles, which led to Naziism, World War II, atomic bombs, and the Cold War.
   
   Of course, there were other factors which formed the tragedy of the twentieth century, and perhaps some of these historical events would have happened anyway. Almost for certain, the Romanov Monarchy would have fallen or been transformed out of recognition without the help of Gavrilo Princip's bullets.
   
   Although the Ottoman Empire was always referred to as "the sick man of Europe," Robert K. Massie illustrates that Russia was not very well either, despite appearances. An obsolescent autocracy, the Russian Empire was mired in time at the dawn of the twentieth century, the great mass of its people existing much as they had 100 years earlier.
   
   Massie's theory, that the hemophilia of Alexis, the young Tsarevich, had an inordinate influence of Russian and subsequent world history, is well thought-out, though perhaps an oversimplification. Yet, it cannot be discounted. The Romanov Dynasty had ruled Russia then for 300 years, and brought the country, by fits and starts, slowly into the orbit of the modern world. Despite this, there is much truth in the observation that "Lenin inherited a nation playing beside a manure pile and Stalin bequeathed a nation playing with an atomic pile." This is not to defend Stalinism, but only to say how little the Romanovs did overall to modernize their State.
   
   When Nicholas II inherited the throne after his father's untimely death, he was woefully unprepared to rule. Dominated for years by archconservative and anti-modernist members of his family, he did little to educate his people, provide health care, build infrastructure, or lift the heavy cloak of official repression that lay over all but ethnic Russians in his realm, or the cloak of cultural repression that lay over the ethnic Russians.
   
   Yet Massie shows us a man and a family of uncommonly kind nature in Nicholas II and his family. His daughter Olga paid personally for the care of a handicapped subject she spied from her carriage one day. The Tsaritsa, Alexandra, despite a reputation as an uncaring woman, herself nursed sick friends before the war and horribly wounded soldiers during the war. The family built hospitals and schools in and around the various cities wherein lay the royal estates. They acted to ameliorate suffering wherever they saw it, without reservation.
   
   Of course, this was the problem. They acted only on what they saw with their own eyes, never recognizing that these sufferings were endemic throughout the realm. Their myopia was part and parcel of the lives of the citified upper classes, completely divorced from the mass of agrarian peasants in the countryside, magnified by the hermetically sealed nature of being an Imperial Family, aided and abetted by sycophants and the self-serving, who kept the real world at a very long arm's length, in order to maintain their own privileged positions. Living in a bubble within a bubble, they were just not aware of conditions in most of Russia.
   
   Nicholas II ruled over the largest domain on earth. Russia today is still the world's largest nation, even shorn of Finland, Poland, the Baltic States, Belarus, the Ukraine, the Central Asian provinces, and (in 1867) Alaska. Sunset in Vladivostok was dawn in Brest-Litovsk. His hundred million subjects included hundreds of peoples speaking hundreds of languages, linked together by a shockingly small road and rail system. The sensitive Nicholas, had he been really cognizant of the shape of things, could have, by a single order, vastly improved the lives of each and every Russian (of course, as he noted, being an autocrat and giving orders does not ensure that they are carried out properly). His greatest failings, as a ruler, all had to do with his decisions to outwardly maintain his Imperial hautre and his autocracy at all costs in the face of cataclysmic change.
   
   This bubble-within-a-bubble existence however, could not spare them from the fact of the Tsarevich's hemophilia. A genetic disorder inherited through the female line (Alexis' Great-Grandmother was Queen Victoria, whose progeny were ravaged by the disease), it prevents the clotting of the blood. When Alexis was born in 1904, the world was a full lifespan away from the development of a usable clotting factor; most hemophiliacs simply bled out and died. The Tsarevich was protected by a full retinue, but this did not help him, and the boy was often in screaming agony and close to death from what might in another child, be a bad bruise. The Heir, therefore lived in a bubble within a bubble within a bubble.
   
   The Tsaritsa, Alexandra, was a solemn, shy, but deeply emotional and loving woman, nicknamed "Sunny" by her husband. To the world, she presented an aloof exterior, and was extremely unpopular with her subjects. Had they known the sorrows and agonies she suffered through with Alexis, her realm, and history, might have treated her far better. But the Imperial Family decided to keep Alexis' condition a closely guarded secret, fearing the destabilization of the Monarchy and Russia in the face of a physically frail Heir. This may have been the Imperial Family's worst error, as it robbed them of an outpouring of sympathy and support from a passionate populace.
   
   Alexandra turned to religion, and ultimately, to Gregory Rasputin, a filthy, degenerate, sexually perverse and personally dissolute monk of peasant extraction. Although derided by most, and called a charlatan by many, Rasputin was perhaps one of the most charismatic men in history, had a devoted following (largely comprised of Society women he'd seduced), did have the power, somehow, to control Alexis' bleeding episodes, and therefore, had the Empress's full and unwavering support in all things.
   
   The feared and hated Rasputin may have indeed been a seer or had mystical powers of some sort, judging from circumstances. Rasputin was not really political, but as his influence over the Romanovs grew, his power expanded commensurately, and he was able to have Ministers dismissed, Generals reassigned to sinecures, and policies changed according to his own whims (expressed as messages from God) or concerns. Capable Russian leaders, who did not know the basis of Rasputin's power, suspected the worst of Alexandra, and in challenging Rasputin found themselves toppled from power. As World War I dawned, Russia was upside-down, its best men in internal exile, and woefully unprepared for war. Rasputin himself counseled against war, stating that Russia would collapse from within. Nonetheless, the British, German and Russian grandsons of Queen Victoria went to war.In that war, millions died, empires fell, nations were born, ideological political systems triumphed, and the stage was set for a darker and yet bloodier future.
   
   The Tsar and his genteel family were consumed, ending their days against a wall before a Bolshevik firing squad, probably not understanding, until the end, that they had been in the eye of a hurricane that remade the world.



4. I first read Nicholas and Alexandra many years ago as a 14 year old. It was a transformative experience for me, awakening what has been a lifelong passionate interest in royal biography and Russian history. Now that I'm in my early fifties, I recently reread Nicholas and Alexandra for the first time in about twenty years, and it continues to have the same magic.
   
   Robert K. Massie became interested in the last Tsar of Russia because he, like Nicholas, was the father of a hemophiliac boy. Massie spent long hours reading about hemophilia and famous hemophiliacs, and he was fascinated by the way Russian and world twentieth century history turned on a chance genetic defect. Had Tsarevich Alexis not had hemophilia, it is probable that Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra would not have come under the malign influence of Gregory Rasputin, the Siberian faith healer who had a catastrophic effect on the Russian government before and during World War I; leading to the Russian Revolution, the rise of Communism, and the deaths of Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children. Its an interesting thesis that still holds up well, though Massie's focus on the inner tragedy of the Tsar's family tends to make him discount the many other problems from which pre-revolutionary Russia suffered. Massie also has a natural tendency to whitewash Nicholas and Alexandra (parents of hemophiliacs have a special bond with those who share their trauma, after all), by barely mentioning such negative traits as the Tsar's anti-Semitism and the Empress' many neuroses.
   
   The book remains an extraordinary work of art. Massie's descriptions of the Russian landscape and his finely drawn character sketches are wonderfully rich and detailed. He is able to explain the political and social complexities of the era colorfully and wittily, even when dealing with such abstractions as the differences between Social Democrats, Social Revolutionaries, and Bolsheviks. Most of all, Massie is able to make us weep for the Romanovs: a man who was a bad Tsar but a good husband and father, a woman who destroyed her family while trying to keep her son alive, and five innocent young people who never had a chance to lead happy, productive lives. Every time I read Nicholas and Alexandra I tremble again at the thought of their last awful moments, but I am enriched still more by the chance to read such a magnificent work of art and scholarship.



5. This is an all-encompassing authoritative biography of the last ruling Romanovs, and Massie has compiled a thorough and well-researched insight into the lives of Nicholas and Alexandra. Even forty years after its original publication and long after the fall of the Soviet Union, it is a relevant part of Russian history. Massie is very sympathetic in his presentation of the royal family and addresses pertinent questions about the fall of the monarchy. If Alexis, the heir to the throne, had not had hemophilia, would the influence of Rasputin not have been necessary? And if Rasputin were never in the picture, would the monarchy have suffered such a tarnished reputation?
   
   The book painted a very vivid picture of the Royal Family based on hundreds of sources and letters. Nicholas is an incapable Tsar but a warm-hearted, devoted husband and father. Alexandra seems frantic and ill at ease (and often just ill) in her constant concern over the life of her son. And I love that I felt I got to know each of the children, Olga, Tatiana, Marie, Anastasia, and Alexis more individually and personally. This made their demise all the more heartbreaking. This book also gave me a greater understanding of the political climate of the time in Russia and a better comprehension of the revolution and the roles of Lenin, Trotsky, and other important players (although I occasionally found some difficulty keeping the various Russian names straight). Overall, this is a captivating book and the saga is all the more intriguing because it's history. I will definitely be interested to read some of the more recent material that Massie presents in The Romanovs: The Last Chapter.

5 comments about Murder of a Medici Princess.

1. This is the fascinating true story of Isabella de Medici, the spunky socialite of Renaissance Florence. She seems like the type of girl you'd want as a friend--independent, interested in the arts, and quite a flirt. The writing is very fluid--you cheer as Isabella runs the show and gasp at her husband's bold violence.



2. At first, I scoffed at the title, thinking that this might be a work of fiction, and a real potboiler at that. And to be honest, despite my fondness for historical novels, nearly every other novel set in the sixteenth century seemed lately to be centered on either Tudor England or Renaissance Italy -- and both of them done to death.
   
   But in spite of my misgivings, this turned out to be a stunning read. Caroline Murphy, author of a previous book on women and politics, has continued her stories of women who played an influental role in the backgrounds of Italian history. This time, the focus is on the city of Florence and the powerful Medici family.
   
   Begining with the fall of the Medici, the book focuses on a member of the junior branch of the family who brought the glory back to Florence. Cosimo de' Medici was a consummate politican and manipulator, but also a fervid patron of the arts and architecture. With his wife, the beautiful Eleonora di Toledo (who was known as La Fecundissima) they had eleven children, many of them sons, but Cosimo's favourite was his daughter Isabella.
   
   A middle child in a huge brood of offspring, she was closest to her brother, Giovanni, and they could be found together constantly, playing games and partnering each other in dancing lessons. Several paintings survive of the princess, a lovely dark haired child with expressive eyes and nearly a smirk on her lips as she surveys the world before her. Clearly she is her father's darling, and knows it. When it came time for her to marry, her father brokered a deal with the Orsini family, based in Rome, and a wedding to Paolo Giordano d'Orsini, a young man with an itch for power and money, and seemingly in love and adoration with Isabella to judge from his letters.
   
   But Cosimo slipped a small clause into the wedding contract -- Isabella would only accompany her husband to his home in Rome if she wanted to. It was a curious condition to the marriage, especially in a time where women were considered to be not much more than two legged birthing machines and subject to abuse and violence from their spouses. For a time, all went well between the couple -- Paolo was off working for advanage of both the Medici and the Orsini, with Cosimo supplying plenty of money for his spendthrift son, and keeping his daughter by his side. He indulged her as best he could, supplying her with the trappings of the high life in the artistic capital of the world.
   
   Isabella created a world of poets and music, sending a steady supply of letters to her husband, letters that were filled with assurances of her love and devotion. But read between the lines, and something else emerges. There's a sly quality to the letters, something that bothers the reader, and if read carefully enough, it becomes clear that Isabella doesn't care very much for her absent husband, and is determined to live her life as she chooses. Even if that means having a lover or two.
   
   The story takes on a much darker tone as it progresses. Her beloved brother, Giovanni, dies of malaria along with another brother and their mother, word comes of Paolo's affairs with various prostitutes in Rome, and Isabella's own growing irritation of her husband. And when Cosimo dies, Isabella tries to keep her glittering fantasy of a life going, but it might already be too late...
   
   This is a tale that is not for the squeamish, as Murphy doesn't hold back on the lives, and especially the deaths, of various members of the Medici family, and also of more ordinary folks. The book is filled with details about daily living, clothing, food, the art of spectacle, and the role of servants and those unseen. What I found very interesting was that the book shifts the focus to women, who usually get shoved to the background of most history. And the subject of the book, Isabella de' Medici, I had never heard of before.
   
   I happily recommend this book for anyone interested in Renaissance Florence, especially for life after the heyday of Lorenzo di Medici. Caroline Murphy has created a story full of life here, creating a woman that is very vivid and aware. The use of family letters is very effective, giving insights into how their minds works, their hopes and moving them beyond the surviving images that have come down through the centuries.
   
   Along with the story, the book is full of black and white drawings taken from the time, which give little snapshots of the world that the Medici moved in. A map of Florence at the time give a sense of place. A genealogical chart sorts out the many branches of the Medici family, and helps to keep everyone straight. Along with the illustrations in the text, there is a gorgeous collection of colour plates, with several paintings of Isabella along with the other players in the story. An extensive bibliography gives enticing suggestions for further research, along with footnotes and an index.
   
   I suspect that this is a book that is going to hit one of my top-ten book lists for 2008. It is a stunning story that breathes new life into what I had thought was a stale topic, and has renewed my interest in Renaissance life and culture.
   
   Caroline Murphy has also written The Pope's Daughter, which does have a tie-in to this story, as Paolo is the grandson of Felice della Rovere, another woman of the Renaissance who was able to hold her own and more in what was very much a man's world.
   
   Five stars overall.



3. I knew very little of this family and this book is easy to read, easy to follow and yet, it was FILLED with history and facst. WONDERFULLY written!



4. Caroline Murphy's new book is another "must have" for lovers of remarkable lesser-known royal stories. One is taken into the extraordinarily "ahead-of-her-time" life of Isabella de Medici, a Renaissance princess and daughter of the first Grand Duke of Tuscany. A thoroughly gifted, cultured and independent individual with an interesting personality that still resonates after 500 years, Isabella was unique among female royal women of the time in her ability to live her life on her own terms, even as a married woman, which truly defied all convention. From the title, obviously things do not go well in the end, and with recent tomb excavations mentioned in passing at the end, the full extent of murderousness in this generation of the Medici is only nowadays fully coming to light. If you think your family is dysfunctional, you will feel as though you grew up in the very bosom of normality after learning what eventually happened within this once-upon-a-time "big happy family."



5. 
   This book is more than a story of Isabella's murder, in fact, very few pages are devoted to the actual murder. The murder is the culmination of the family relationships that brew from page one.
   
   Through this story we learn of the people and their times. We come to appreciate Cosimo Medici, who rebuilt his family dynasty through politics and strategic marriages. We come to appreciate even more his extraordinary daughter.
   
   Not being steeped in the history of Italy at this time, I found the first few chapters hard going. The genealogies of Medicis and the other European monarchs are complex and difficult to follow. After this, as the personalities get drawn and the story unfolds it becomes a page turner building to the actual murder.
   
   The book built my interest Italian history. I will be reading more Italian history.

No comments about Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace.