Review: Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie

Ready?  Because this is momentous.

I DID IT!

With this book, I've completed 100 books in 2011.  Robert K. Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra was THE final book.  I am done, and for about five minutes, I was exhausted.  And then I went to the library and picked out another book.  Review on this page, wrap-up in the next entry.

At the turn of the 20th century, Russia was one of the few remaining autocratic nations in the world.  Its vast dominions had been governed for 300 years by the Romanov family.  The current tsar, or Emperor, was Nicholas II, a young, handsome, quiet man who feared confrontation and lived to make people happy.  His bride was the German princess Alix of Hesse, who later changed her name to Alexandra Fedorovna.  Theirs was a love match, not an arranged marriage, and together they had five children -- four elder daughters, and one young son and heir to the throne, Alexei.  Unbeknown to her, Alexandra carried in her the mutant gene that plagued the ruling houses of Europe -- her son Alexei was born with hemophilia, at the time a dangerous blood disease that constantly threatened his life.  In time, the silence surrounding Alexei's affliction, coupled with the unrest in their society, lead Russia full-tilt into revolution, and the Romanov family into tragedy.

Massie's book reads more like a novel than a non-fiction history, in most parts.  His chapters about politics, war, and Lenin are rather dry; those are difficult to get through at times.  But his writing is never better than when he is describing the day-to-day life and relationships of the Romanovs.  Like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the Romanovs are often lambasted in history as being antiquated, pretentious, spoiled and undisciplined, rulers who deserved the terrible ends that befell them because they did not heed the cries of their subjects, letting them starve instead.  But Massie illustrates the backgrounds that lead them to be this way, including the murder of Tsar Nicholas II's grandfather after he freed the serfs and instituted a Duma (parliament) and Nicholas' tutelage under Podobenostov, the student of autocracy.  You can't help but feel for the Romanovs during their plight.

Massie's "inspiration" (if you can call it that) for writing this book was the birth of his own son, who, like Alexei, was born with hemophilia.  His thesis in writing Nicholas and Alexandra was this: that although the country was already pre-inclined towards revolution and the death of the autocracy, the fate of the nation was sealed when Alexei was born with that small but critical gene mutation.  I won't explain his reasons for thinking so; you'll have to read the book yourself, I can't recommend it enough.  Anyone who is interested in Russian history or the lives of the Romanovs should read this book.  It is amazing.

Rating: *****

 

Review: Alexandra, The Last Tsarina by Carolly Erickson

Confession here.  I don't  know if it's the winter, the going back to school in the spring, or what, but I'm definitely on a Russian history kick right now.  Don't seem to know how to stop, don't want to.  Even after the grim awfulness that was The House of Special Purpose, I still want more, more, more.  Book 91 of the year is Alexandra: The Last Tsarina by Carolly Erickson.

Much in the style of Antonia Fraser, author Erickson chronicles the life of the unfortunate Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, later the Tsarina-Empress Alexandra Feodorovna Romanov of Russia.  Alix is a minor German princess and the daughter of the formidable Queen Victoria of Great Britain, who defies her family's wishes and becomes engaged to Nicholas II, the gentle, quiet heir to the throne of Russia.  Nicholas believes he has many, many years to educate himself in the duties of being the Tsar-Emperor of Imperial Russia, when his father dies suddenly and he and Alix are thrown haphazardly into their roles of leading an immense empire.  Nicholas is inept and vacillating, Alix constantly ill and, after birthing four daughters, obsessed with the production of an heir.  When her son Alexei is finally born, Alix feels intense relief, until she discovers that Alexei is a hemophiliac, and it was her genes that passed it on to him.  Her obsession with Alexei's health drives her to search for help in the divine intercession of the starets Gregory Efimovich, known as Rasputin, and as the country races toward revolution, Alix grimly tries to hold on to her throne, her husband, her son, and her land.

It's unfortunate that I read this book after reading Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert Massie, in my opinion the greatest biography of the Romanov family ever written.  Erickson tries to paint a vivid portrait of Alix's life, but compared to Massie's, her writing comes up short.  She also fails to elicit sympathy for Alix, choosing to highlight her less-than-favorable characteristics, a good reason why she was so hated by the Russian people, and making much of her poor relationship with Nicholas' mother, the Dowager Empress Marie.  Reading about Alix's mocking caricatures of the members of the Russian court, it is difficult to feel sorry for her when she was maligned and reviled.  Instead of making Alix seem like the sad, somewhat fatalistic, yet very much in love woman that Massie portrays, Erickson draws her as emotional, depressive, an Eeyore of a queen that was highly insufferable.

Two stars because it was well-researched, clearly Erickson did her homework, but it wasn't enough to captivate my interest.

Rating: **

Review: Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser

Connecticut is still recovering from our freak snowstorm and widespread power failure.  I entertained myself by downloading a book on Kindle right before the storm.  I seem to have a penchant for reading about doomed female monarchs, and having read a great deal about the Tudors and England, I have moved on to the French Revolution.  Book #81 for the year was Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser.

Born an Austrian archduchess and married at 14 to the future King of France, Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, better known as Marie Antoinette, is an elusive character to understand.  Like Anne Boleyn, another doomed queen, she takes on many forms.  On one hand, she's the she-devil who corrupted a nation, spent millions of dollars on frivolity, kept countless lovers while cuckolding her husband the King, and deserved the inglorious end she received.  On the other, she's the tragic martyr of Versailles, a doting wife and loving mother who was falsely accused of a storm of accusations, betrayed by the nation she loved and whose interests she worked tirelessly for.  It is difficult to remember that the woman who mounted the scaffold at thirty-eight years old began her life as an indulged little daughter of one of Europe's most celebrated monarchs, a young girl desperate to please all around her.  Antonia Fraser takes this much-disputed figure and shows the journey from archduchess to queen to mother...to legend.

Like Alison Weir, Antonia Fraser has the gift of taking historical nonfiction and writing it like a novel.  This book, long as it was (500 pages) was an incredibly fast read.  Having seen the Sofia Coppola film that it was loosely based upon, I expected pages upon pages of indulgence, frivolity, and saccharine sweetness.  The film does Fraser's book no credit.  Antoinette's spendthrift days are over long before the book is halfway complete -- truly, Fraser spends the majority of her writing discussing and dissecting the long and terrible years of imprisonment and terror that Antoinette and her family spent after the liberation of the Bastille and the fall of the monarchy.  A great deal of time is spent in trying to explain exactly why the French people so hated Marie Antoinette, that she became the scapegoat and the symbol of all that was wrong with the monarchy.

Growing up, most of us are introduced to Marie Antoinette as the frivolous queen who wasted the country's money like crazy and was too stupid to realize she was spending her way into her own grave.  And Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst would surely point us in that direction.  But Fraser's book offers a closer look into the life of the real Antoinette, her lifestyle, her motives, her viewpoints, and why, as Fraser believes, her tragic end was a foregone conclusion from the moment of her birth.

Rating: **** and 1/2

Review: Belles On Their Toes by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

Ever have one of those days where you can't find anything to read?  My bookshelves are looking quite bare these days.  I've read most of my books, and right now I'm kind of on a hiatus from buying any (although I do troll Amazon.com each day in search of cheap or discounted ebooks).  But this one has been on my shelf as a throwback to when I was a little kid and my mom read it to me.  It's a quick read, and one I love because of the background.

My mother grew up in a very large family.  My grandparents had nine children, two boys and seven girls, and adopted another girl late in life.  My mother was number seven of the ten.  When we were growing up, my sister and I were fascinated by the stories she told about growing up in a big family with so many kids.  And my mom, who read to us a lot, read us the stories of the Gilbreth family -- a husband and wife engineering team who had a dozen children, six boys and six girls.  Two of the children went on to write a book series about their lives.  The first was called Cheaper By the Dozen (which is nothing like the Steve Martin knockoff film), and featured mainly stories from the early years, as each of the children were born, and life with both parents.

The sequel, Belles On Their Toes, begins in 1924, after "Dad", Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr., has passed away.  In order to keep the huge family together, their mother, Lillian Moller Gilbreth, an engineer in her own right, must work hard to keep her husband's business afloat.  Left alone with the eldest girl -- Anne, age 18 -- in charge, the children must work together, save their pennies, and do their best to make ends meet so that the family won't be divided.  Despite the tremendous odds stacked against her, Lillian is determined to fulfill her husband's dream of putting every single one of the dozen children through college.  She refuses to listen to the naysayers who tell her that a woman can't run a business, the family won't survive on its own, and she'll never manage to send them all to school.  Through a series of vignettes, the authors (daughter Ernestine and son Frank Jr.) tell the humorous stories of making ends meet and growing up in a riotous family, while honoring their mother and giving credit where it's so due.

The major character who is sorely missed in Belles is Frank Sr., who provided a lot of the comedy in Dozen.  But Belles is meant to honor Lillian, and really gives her a chance to shine, and her own personality to show through.  Where Frank ran the household like a factory (efficiency charts, regimentation, etc), Lillian (as a psychologist) struggled to treat her children as individuals, and insisted that they remain so.  It shows -- Belles highlights the children individually, with their own stories and memories, rather than referring to "the dozen."  There is much more stressing on the individuality, especially of the oldest and youngest children.  The ones in the middle, such as Frank Jr., Lillian, and Bill, don't seem to have a big part in the sequel -- unfortunate, since Bill was one of my favorite characters in Dozen.  

Still, it's a cute book, and funny (though I know a lot of reviewers complain that they have trouble relating, since the book is set almost 80 years ago).  And I still can't read it without thinking of my mom :)

Rating: *** and 1/2

Review: The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir

Warning: Spoilers.

Alison Weir is my favorite British historian, bar none.  I have many of her biographies (most of them) and I have read two of her three historical fictions.  But of all her books, this one, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, is by far my favorite.

Due in part to writers like Philippa Gregory and the Showtime series The Tudors, there has been a definite resurgence of interest in Renaissance England andTudor dynasty.  But especially in King Henry VIII, the man who virtually created the English Reformation and who was notorious in his married life, the only King to have six wives.  But Weir does not merely focus on the life of Henry VIII -- something colorful and occupying in its own right -- but chooses to tell the story of the six women who were bound to him in holy matrimony throughout his turbulent reign.  Because of a dearth of knowledge about the latter four queens (and also their shortened reigns and little influence on English history), Weir chooses to write the first two thirds of her book about Henry's first two queens, leaving one chapter for the third lady, and cramming the last three into the third part.  

Part One, entitled "The Princess from Spain", is all about Katherine of Aragon, the first queen, a princess from Spain who came to England to marry Henry's elder brother Arthur, who died just weeks after their wedding.  After swearing that the marriage was never consummated, Katharine was then betrothed to Henry, who took her as his wife for fourteen years before annulling the marriage on the grounds that she could not provide him with a son.  This part of the book is probably the happiest, and where we see Henry at his best, before age and intransigence made him a vicious tyrant.  Weir dissects English history up to this point, describing the English court and political stage, as well as the marriage between Henry and Katherine, why it began so successfully, and what lead to its ultimate failure.

Part Two is titled "The King's Great Matter" and is all about Anne Boleyn, the lady-in-waiting who aspired to the throne of England and who promised Henry a son if he married her.  Weir explains the religious schisms happening in Europe at the time and why it was ultimately so easy for Henry to break with the Roman Catholic Church when they did not give him his annulment, and how Anne's constant assurances that Henry had absolute power lead them all to disaster.  By the end of Part Two, Henry is no longer an affable and friendly monarch, he is a tyrant who stops at nothing to have his will and destroy those who oppose him.  And of course, by its end, Anne is dead, as is Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour, whose short but memorable career as queen of England ended in death after the birth of Henry's son, the future Edward VI.

Part Three, "How Many Wives Will He Have?" focuses on Henry's last three marriages and the motivations behind each, as well as his attempts to fulfill his two very important needs: more sons for the assurance of the succession after his death, and his attempts to reclaim the youth he lost.  His marriage to his fourth wife, the German Anne of Cleves, was a dismal failure from the start (Henry is reported to have been displeased with her appearance) and was annulled after six months.  Henry's fifth marriage was to a mere English teenager, the 15-year-old Katherine Howard, whom he was reported to be deeply and passionately in love with (rather like Anne).  After Katherine's death, Henry married the widow Katherine Parr, who is his queen during his short but successful invasion of France and up until his last days.

Weir's biography explains Tudor England and Renaissance Europe during a time of incredible turmoil and change, through the lives of these six women who had the fortune (good or bad) to marry England's most notorious and irascible King.  Yet by the end, Weir almost has me feeling a modicum of sympathy even for King Henry, for surely the life she unfolded in her novel was not what he had anticipated.  The sequel, The Children of Henry VIII, is nearly as well-written and colorful, and picks up where Wives left off.  This book and others of Weir's are, IMO, a must for any Tudor fanatics, and much better than most historical fiction about the period.

Rating: *****

Review: My Sergei: A Love Story by Ekaterina Gordeeva and E.M. Swift

In the 1980s and 1990s, the greatest names in pairs figure skating were Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, from Russia.  For nearly a decade, they dominated their sport, winning gold medals at the 1988 and 1994 Olympic Games, and turning professional to great accolades.  Gordeeva and Grinkov (or G and G, as they were playfully known) were the poster children for the "image" of the pairs skaters: the tiny, childlike female skater and the strong male partner a whole head taller than her.  They were skaters, they were best friends, they were lovers.  Their lives were a virtual fairy tale, until November 20, 1995.  On that day, while practicing a routine, Sergei suddenly collapsed on the ice and died of an undiagnosed heart condition.  He was 28 years old. 

A widow at age 24 with a two year old daughter, Ekaterina was left with the pieces of her shattered life, wondering how to move on and learn to live again without the partner she had had since the age of 11.  The result was this collaboration with E.M. Swift, My Sergei: A Love Story.

Ekaterina tells both her story and Sergei's, intermingling stories of their childhoods, of growing up in the Soviet Union, learning to skate and their pairing together.  The book truly is a "love story", living up to its subtitle -- Ekaterina brings the reader through their courtship, marriage, and foray into parenthood with their daughter, Daria.  Their brief but illustrious figure skating career is described throughout; the book would be incomplete without it.  

But Ekaterina's real purpose in this collaboration is the "celebration of a life" -- finding a way to move past the pain of Sergei's early, tragic death and find joy in the life left to her and her daughter.  She expresses her fear and grief at the prospect of living the rest of her life without him, yet by the end, she has learned to accept her future.  

As a figure skater, I read this book as a child, barely knowing who Gordeeva and Grinkov were.  This book has the distinction of being the first volume to ever make me cry -- and I must confess that I cried again in reading it now, for the first time in probably ten years.  It is a beautiful memoir, something that would touch even someone who has never laced up a pair of skates.

Rating: **** and 1/2

Review: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

I don't know how I managed to finish a book in between moving furniture into our new place, but I'm happy to say that we are finally "all moved in" and that the only (rather large) task left for us to do is unpack everything.  And find some living room furniture, but that's another story.  We have several wonderful friends who were willing to help us move in yesterday.  Exhausted today, I spent the majority of my Sunday resting, reading, and eating Asian food.  Perfect Sunday.  And somehow, I managed to finish book #27 for 2011 -- Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir Eat, Pray, Love.

When writer Elizabeth Gilbert finds herself sobbing on her bathroom floor in the middle of the night, overcome with the realization that she no longer wants to be married, she knows that she is missing something very fundamental in her life.  Upon concluding her very messy divorce, she takes a year-long trip around the world, spending three months each in Italy, India, and Indonesia -- the three I's, as she puts it -- to find God, seek enlightenment, and rediscover the joy in her life.

As a woman who has struggled with anxiety disorder and religious conviction for the past six years, I felt a kinship with Liz as she fought against her problems with opening up her consciousness and letting go of her guilt.  I found myself cheering for her as she learned to indulge herself again in Italy, to meditate and enlighten herself in India, and to flirt again in Bali.  Her whirlwind year of re-learning to express herself, and looking for God in all things, was really a treat to read.  I agree with a lot of reviewers on the Goodreads page, that the Italy chapter (the book is divided into three segments for the three countries she visits) is really the one that is the most forgettable -- India was my favorite part.  But still, good.  

My one complaint about the book is that the ending can read as a little trite and unbelievable.  I realize that it is Liz's life, and it did happen...it's just a little too predictable, you know?  (Or maybe you don't know, you'd have to read the whole thing to really relate).  Still, I enjoyed the book, and that's two memoirs in the past week finished.

Rating: ****

Review: Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

As I wrote previously, my goal for my "100 Books in 2011" was to reach 25 books by the end of March.  I'm a few days late, but only six!  Technically five, because I finished my 25th book yesterday evening while David was at class.  Twenty-five percent down, seventy-five percent to go!  (When you put it that way, it doesn't seem like I'm too far done!)  And here I'll sum up my 25th book for 2011: Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt.

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

Francis "Frank" McCourt is an odd case.  Born in New York City in 1930 to Irish immigrants (a father from Northern Ireland and a mother from Limerick), he moves with his family back to Ireland following the unfortunate death of his baby sister, Margaret.  The McCourts are a sad, pitiable family, comprised of Frank's alcoholic father, his emotionally-fragile mother (the titular Angela), and his younger brothers, Malachy (named for his father), Oliver, and Eugene.  After being spurned by his paternal grandparents in Northern Ireland and rebuffed by his maternal grandmother's family, the McCourts finally settle in Angela's hometown of Limerick, in the hopes that their new life in Ireland will bring better fortune.

Good fortune is hard to come by, unfortunately.  Malachy McCourt Sr., Frank's father, is in and out of work, and spends what little he makes at the pubs.  Angela McCourt can hardly scrape the family by on her husband's meager earnings "on the dole" (the Irish term for welfare) and is forced to resort to begging at times to keep her children fed.  She is also constantly pregnant -- the family is ever-expanding, which only adds to their financial woes.  Frank finds what little solace he has in his Catholic religion, which runs every aspect of his life, and in school, where he discovers he is incredibly intelligent.  His one, all-encompassing dream is to finish school, get a job that pays a little money, and save enough to move back to America, what he and everyone else considers his homeland.  But over the years, Frank discovers that Ireland is more in his blood and soul than he ever imagined it would be.

Angela's Ashes has a reputation for being depressing, and is it ever.  I gave up on the hope that the McCourts would eventually have some good luck about a third of the way into the book.  But the rawness, the reality, is so complete, I could picture Frank's life in rainy, cold Limerick as easily as if I had been there myself watching it.  Rarely have I ever been so transported by a book.  

Frank's interesting penchant for not using quotation marks took some getting used to, but by the second chapter, I was acclimated and on my way to eating the book up.  My one complaint was that the ending came too soon, and left too many unanswered questions.  Frank McCourt wrote two sequels to his Pulitzer-prizewinning novel, 'Tis and Teacher Man, that apparently continue the story (and maybe answer some of those questions), so I may pick those up in the future.  On a whole, one of my favorite memoirs, and I will definitely be reading this again.

Rating: ****

Review: Mistress of the Monarchy: The Life of Katharine Swynford...by Alison Weir

Everyone and their mother is reading (and writing) about the Renaissance these days, thanks to the popularity of books like The Other Boleyn Girl and TV shows like The Tudors (yum).  I myself have read many, many books about the period of English history beginning with the Wars of the Roses and ending with Queen Elizabeth I.  And having done so, I'm looking to branch out a bit.  My first historical foray into the history of medieval England is Alison Weir's Mistress of the Monarchy: The Life of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster.

Katharine Swynford, as author Alison Weir puts it several times, is quite the anomaly.  Married very young to a knight of humble origins, she was employed by the King's son, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, as a governess to his daughters.  Upon the death of his beloved wife, Blanche of Lancaster, John embarked on a torrid and scandalous affair with Governess Katherine, an affair that lasted over thirty years and produced four children!  But most shocking of all, the governess who became a mistress later, upon the death of John of Gaunt's second wife, was taken by John in marriage!  This was practically unheard of in a time when men "of a certain standing" never married their mistresses, but bedded them and then provided for any bastards born to them.

But John of Gaunt's bastards did not live in peaceful obscurity.  Two of them went on to marry and produce children who would become the ancestors of such royal figures as Richard III, Henry Tudor (later Henry VII), Henry VIII, and Queen Elizabeth I herself.  Were it not for John of Gaunt's passionate love for Mistress Katherine, the royal house of England today would not exist.

Weir tries to do justice to Katharine, but unfortunately, there are not nearly enough records to paint a clear portrait of her life.  Instead, Weir fleshes out her story with a history of medieval England -- the rule of the incompetent and tyrannical Richard II, the usurption of Henry of Derby (later Henry IV), and the slow but sure change to the Renaissance period.  It is a fantastic story, but Weir might have done better to write a biography of John of Gaunt, or even just a history of that exciting and turbulent period in history, rather than to simply focus on England's most prolific mistress.

Rating: ***

Review: Richard the Third by Paul Murray Kendall

FINALLY.  I am so glad to see the end of this book.  At least, I was, when I completed it last night, but being too doped up on drugs for my back, I didn't have enough faith in myself to write a review right then.

When I received Richard the Third by Paul Murray Kendall from my parents for Christmas, I went into it with the expectation that Kendall would write a sturdy, generic account of the life of Richard, Duke of Gloucester and later King of England.  The king, whose reputation is a byproduct of Shakespearean legend, who is known always as a villain, the usurper of the English crown who would not even hesitate to commit murder to get what he wants, even the murder of his two nephews, King Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, the tragic children known as the Princes in the Tower.  It's a story I felt I knew inside and out.

But.  I was wrong.

Kendall is no unbiased observer.  His goal is simple: to tell the story of what he feels is the real Richard III, and to debunk the rumors as nothing more than what he calls "Tudor tale(s)."  Instead of the vicious usurper, Kendall writes about the sickly boy who idolized his older brother Edward, the talented soldier and charismatic ruler who seized the throne and became King Edward IV.  In Kendall's version of events, the true villain is Edward's wife, the infamous and beautiful Elizabeth Woodville, the first commoner who ever took the title Queen of England.  Elizabeth, and the rest of the Woodville family, metaphorically castrate King Edward and ruin his reign, leaving him soft, emasculated, and disrespected.  Upon the king's death, his twelve-year-old son, Edward, is left to manage as king, with his uncle Richard as Lord Protector of England until Edward reaches adulthood.  Kendall argues that Richard's decision to take the crown from his nephew was really an unselfish attempt to recuperate the image that his brother destroyed.  Kendall's theories are best explained in the following passage:

...The passionately loyal brother who was Constable of England and commander in his teens, who indefatigably bolstered Edward (IV)'s throne and won the devotion of the North, may readily be traced in the King earnestly seeking to dispense justice to his subjects and exerting a prodigious vitality to deal with the problems of his government.  But between these lives stands the Protector who usurped the throne, the brother who thus doomed, if he did not murder, the boy king who was Edward's son.  The dislocation of this middle moment can be divined, if true, in the progressive corrosion worked upon Richard's relation with his brother by the direction of Edward's later life; and its consequences plainly show themselves in the King's labor to atone for his rupture of the succession, in his compulsive reliance upon loyalty rather than force, and in the haunted and feverish pursuit of well-doing that wore out his heart.  Yet it is a fractured life, and the man who lived it must also have been, obscurely, fractured. (Kendall, pg. 389)

Flaws: This book is long, and it is dry.  Also, in his attempt to change history's perceptions of Richard, Kendall puts off talking about that most juicy and intricate story of the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower.  There is a blurb at the end of the book about it, where Kendall tries to exonerate Richard of their murder -- which is good, providing you have the patience to read Appendix I:

It will perhaps come as a surprise to the reader accustomed to the absolute assurance of history texts and guidebooks that there is no proof that King Richard murdered the two sons of King Edward IV.

Kendall's theories are interesting.  Unfortunately, the prose of his book is rather less so, and he is fighting a losing battle in trying to prove the innocence of one of the most notorious reputations in the annals of history.  To those who are interested in biographies and history, particularly British history, this is a must-read.  For everyone else, skip it.  You probably won't even make it to the Battle of Tewksbury, much less Bosworth Field.

Rating: ** and 1/2