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Title: Search Elsewhere...
Review: I love Russian history and was hoping to find a book that dealt less with speculation of Ivans reign and more with the truth. Most historians tend to demonize Ivan based on little evidence, most of the evidence we have comes from letters written during his reign by a host of people, since I have read most of them I am not sure why I expected to find any kind of new information. She does a good job ignoring many details of what Ivan was faced with and instead decides to chalk everything up to, he was a maniac. Not a strong leader who was surrounded by enemies in and out of his own country, with several attempts made on his life due to the reforms he put in place, namely the Oprichnina. There are a handful of books I have found that can shed a much better light than this one, The Third Rome, Reinterpreting Russian History, and A History Of Russia Vol.1.
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