The Romanovs, 1613-1918

"Amid the gruesome deaths, grisly twists of fate and countless names with clustering consonants, a single thread seems to string this fascinating history together: Few families have been so blessed and blighted by fate as the dynasty that ruled Russia for some three centuries. Simon Sebag Montefiore tells a long — and often violent — tale so wrought with dark melodrama that it would be as comfortable on HBO as on a college syllabus. Exhaustively researched, elegantly expressed and brutal at just about every turn."