Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating book that could really be the last words on the final days of the Last Imperial Family, 30 Jun 2008
I have just finished your book and I can not say how much I enjoyed it. One feels strangely saying so as it is a sad story by any means.
I have lots of books on the Romanovs and I was quite hesitant to buy another one. What can be possibly new about the whole subject?
But I have to admit that this excellent book gave me a new inside and you were able to separate the political side of things, from the human dimension. There is no romantic or religious vision of the final days. It is not written with a hidden agenda of glorifying the last Imperial Family. It clearly separates the politcial story that led to the downfall of the dynasty and the the human tragedy.
Helen Rappaport did not write the story - as it is ever so often - from the end. I appreciated very much how she showed the different personalities of the Imperial family and how they coped with the new situation. The personality of Alexandra, her illnesses, the illness of the Heir and how this effected all of the family long before the fall of the dynasty. The view that the isolation of the family during their reign found a sort of continuation during the confinement, but without the demands of the rule, and were partly at least from the Czar "welcome" is indeed very convincing. Her final comments hid a nerve with me. On top, I just like Helen Rappaport's style of writing.
All in all, I enjoyed this book immensely, it is fascianting, well written and gives the reader much stuff for further thought. I can only recommend this book!
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating book that could really be the last words on the final days of the Last Imperial Family, 9 Jan 2009
I have just finished your book and I can not say how much I enjoyed it. One feels strangely saying so as it is a sad story by all means.
I have lots of books on the Romanovs and I was quite hesitant to buy another one. What can be possibly new about the whole subject?
But I have to admit that this excellent book gave me a new inside and you were able to separate the political side of things, from the human dimension. There is no romantic or religious vision of the final days. It is not written with a hidden agenda of glorifying the last Imperial Family. It clearly separates the politcial story that led to the downfall of the dynasty and the the human tragedy.
Helen Rappaport did not write the story - as it is ever so often - from the end. I appreciated very much how she showed the different personalities of the Imperial family and how they coped with the new situation. The personality of Alexandra, her illnesses, the illness of the Heir and how this effected all of the family long before the fall of the dynasty. The view that the isolation of the family during their reign found a sort of continuation during the confinement, but without the demands of the rule, and were partly at least from the Czar "welcome" is indeed very convincing. Her final comments hid a nerve with me. On top, I just like Helen Rappaport's style of writing.
All in all, I enjoyed this book immensely, it is fascianting, well written and gives the reader much stuff for further thought. I can only recommend this book!
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Russian tragedy, 22 Jun 2008
The fate of the Romanovs is well known. Many books have been written about the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II & his family - Tsaritsa Alexandra, Tsarevich Alexey & the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria & Anastasia - many of them full of wild speculation that some of the family survived the murders in 1918. Helen Rappaport's new book focuses on the last two weeks of their lives, imprisoned in the Ipatiev House (known to their Bolshevik captors as the House of Special Purpose) in Ekaterinburg, a small town in the Urals. The book is based on extensive research among Russian sources not generally accessible to Western researchers & this is its great strength. Rappaport alternates between taking the reader inside the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Ipatiev House, as the family's horizons are narrowed to the few rooms on the first floor, circling back through time to fill in background detail on the inept rule of the Tsar which led to the upheaval of revolution, & moving to Moscow, Petrograd & London as political forces influence the family's fate. The final chapters are harrowing with the description of the family's murder & the almost farcical ineptitude of the executioners. A compulsively readable book for anyone interested in the Romanovs or Russia in the 20th century.
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