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Title: one of the great biographies
Review: I've always been a great reader of novels, but reading this book a couple of years ago has made me into a reader of history. Massie has a grand subject -- Peter opened a long-sleeping Russia to the West, founded St. Petersburg (a beautiful city built, somewhat like Venice, basically on a body of water) and fought many wars. People must have kept great diaries back then because Massie is able to recreate events at court and battles from multiple points of view, lending the book a novelistic richness. Equally impressive, since the book is as much about Peter's times as it is about him, Massie pauses to include mini-essays about the many places and types of things that Peter the polymath was involved in. So you get a brief sketch of the Netherlands at the time, or about popular torture techniques of the day, that don't break up the overall narrative flow. It's a long book but a great read
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