What is the purpose of learning history? It already happened and we don't need to worry ourselves with the past.
I hate it when people say this. I always look them in the eyes and say "Those who do not know history are destined to repeat it." I believe this is one of the reasons Robert K.. Massie decided to write this book was to educated people on what happened to The Last Tsar of Russia so that nothing like what happened to his family happens to any other royal or normal family again. It also shows what people do when they don't like what their government is doing. This book also gave some insight on the genetic disease hemophilia.
I do not believe that there was a message in the book. It was a very straight forward, if a little different, history book. It tells you what happened and gives you the knowledge to not let it happen again. It may not have a message but it helps us learn as all books do.
<---- This is the quote I live by and the person who said it.
Robert Kinloch Massie III was born 1929 in Lexington, Kentucky. He spent most of his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee. He studied United States and European history at Yale and Oxford University. He worked as a journalist at Newsweek from 1959-62 before moving to Saturday Evening Post.
His family includes his former wife Suzanne Massie and his son Bob Massie.
Robert Massie says that it was family circumstances that started his interest in Russian history. His son was born with hemophilia and he had a history background from his studies at Yale and Oxford and knew a very little bit about Tsarevich Alexis, the only son and heir to Nicholas 2nd , the last tsar of Russia. Alexis had hemophilia passed down to him from his mother, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. The boys illness led to the involvement of Rasputin as a healer. This all led to the downfall of the last Russian Tsar and the spiral into the family's demise. Nothing had been written about the family and these events from this perspective and Robert decided to do it. His first book Nicholas and Alexandra was the result.
I believe that Robert studying at Yale and Oxford give him some reliability and he researched very thoroughly even traveling to Russia to do research.
Robert has also written The Romanovs: The Final Charapter after more information about the family was found out.
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This is Robert K. Massie
