The Last of the Tsars: Nicholas II and the Russian Revolution Hardcover – 23 Feb. 2017

A meticulous history focusing closely on the family of the Tsar and the sorry progress towards the firing squad in Ekaterinburg. The sense of doom hangs over all of them from the outset, but their helplessness in the face of their doom is truly pathetic. Well written and engrossing.

This book is very good at explaining the intricate details of the events between the abdication and death of Czar Nicholas II and how he responded to the events around him. It draws heavily from original materials, such as diary entries and recorded conversations. It strikes the right balance between detailing the events and presenting them in readable and interesting way.If like me, you have a general interest in the life of Nicholas II and the events leading to his death and abdication then this is one of the best works to read.

Very interesting and well written. Also very sad - the whole family were gunned down, including the children. I'd definitely recommend it.

Enjoying this book at the momnent not finished

Another amazing biography from Robert - top notch! My only criticism would be of a slight loss of interest in places - but this is more down to perhaps my personal taste of subject matter, I’m more taken by his biographies of revolutionaries!

Very interesting book & a good read.

I read a few books before on the Russian Revolution so maybe it was pointless of me hoping this was going to give me some new insight into it.Saying that I feel I have read better books on the demise of the Tsar. Peter Kurth was my favourite. Plus I would have liked at the end, a bit of a bibliography on the main players and what happened to them in later years. Kerensky, Stolypin, Kalinin,Zinoviev, Stalin Kolchak Kornilovs and the guys in Yekaterinaburg who shot them. In the end I had to Google them for myself. Would I recommended this book? No really is the answer There is better books on the subject and to spend your time on, out there to read

I’ve enjoyed some of Robert Service’s other books, especially his history of Modern Russia. This however feels a rushed out piece of work without the same diligence.It covers only the last year of the Tsar’s life and doesn’t really add much to what you know already. At times it also seems sloppily written.Not his best work.

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Very interesting study of Tsar Nicholas and the Russian Revolutions

My husband thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Robert Service is a well known Russian historian, author of thirteen books, an emeritus professor at Oxford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With such credentials a reader would expect this book to be both scholarly and groundbreaking. While it is true that there is some new material in The Last of the Tsars, unfortunately there is also much that is wrong, or at least poorly presented.The book focuses on the last eighteen months of Nicholas II's life, from the February Revolution of 1917 when he abdicated to his and his family's brutal murder in Ekaterinberg in July 1918. Service provides some interesting material on Nicholas' reading habits while being held captive, but since the tsar was by no means a reflective or introspective person, Service is hard-pressed to find any evidence that he learned anything at all from his reading. Similarly, Service reports Nicholas' conversations with some of his guards and officials who were sent to interview him, but can't come up with much beyond the fact (which is already well known) that the tsar was not particularly intelligent. The book is made up of many fairly short chapters, some of which are poorly organized with random material about Nicholas' extended family tossed in at random, including a lengthy discussion of how dull-minded Grand Duke George Mikhailovich seemed in his exile in Finland, for example. Service confuses some names and patronyms and titles, and most oddly seems to still believe that the last imperial family's remains were dumped down a mineshaft and left there. The family's actual burial spot has been known since 1991.There is some new material dealing with the communications between the Bolsheviks in Moscow and Ekaterinburg in July 1918, when Lenin and Trotsky played a large role in the decision to execute the Tsar and his family and then worked hard to obscure their involvement, and there is some detail about the subsequent Sokolov investigation into the murders which I hadn't seen before. Nevertheless I found this a rather disappointing book. Readers seeking a fuller treatment of the Imperial Family's last days would do well to read Helen Rappaport's "The Last Days of the Romanovs" and "The Race to Save the Romanovs."

My shelf teems with books on the Romanov dynasty and the personalities of Lenin and Stalin. Anytime I see a new book on this subject on Amazon I promptly order the tome! Dr. Robert Service has written a dozen books on Russia and is a renowned scholar of Communism. He teaches at Oxford University. Any book by him is worth reading. The Last of the Tsars is a good book but not that easy to read! It tells the tragic tale of Nicholas II who was the last Tsar in Russian history. He reigned from 1894 until 1917 when he and his family were arrested by the Provisional Government headed by Alexander Kerensky. Nicholas was forced to abdicate the throne and the long reign of the Romanovs who have governed Russia since 1613 came to a bloody end! During the last sixteen months of their lives Nicholas, his wife Alexandra and their children Tatiana, Maria, Olga, Anastasia and Alexis the hemophiliac son who was due to inherit the throne wee imprisoned at Tsarko Selo, Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg in the Ipatev Home. The latter two cities were in the Western Siberian Urals Regions. In this area a bloody civil war was raging between the Whites and the Reds. Soon after the Romanovs execution in a basement in the Ipatev House the Czech legion took Ekaterinburg from the Communists. 2018 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the murders of the Romanovs. The Russian Orthodox Church has named Nicholas II and his family as saints of the church. Nicholas was a rabid anti-Semite who was an extreme nationalist. He little understood his vast domains and millions of people suffered under his rulership. He was intellectually limited though he did begin to study Russian history and literature with a new intensity during his captivity. He enjoyed manual labor and was deeply devoted to Alexandra his ailing German born wife. The couple missed Rasputin the monk who had sought to comfort them while seeking to heal Alexis. The book is noted for:a. Great detail about the personalities of those who surrounded the Tsar and were his friends and enemies. Lots of Russian names to get through and a crowded stage of characters!b. The book has many typos.c. The book is written in a dry academic styled. The author's research is impeccablee. Worth reading but more for its historical than its literary merits.