Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. MassieMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was quite a thick biography about someone I was totally ignorant of (other than his famous name), so I started in on it with both low expectations and quite some trepidation. It was Great. Like Peter. It read like an adventure novel - quests, foreign wars, defense of the motherland, parties and royal intrigues. Peter opened Russia to European technology and culture much the same way that the Meiji Restoration (明治維新) opened Japan. He established Saint Petersburg as his capital, building it from nothing in the Neva Delta swamp, and brought Russia into the Maritime age with a new, mostly ice free port on the Baltic. Just as Japan managed a few centuries later, Russia learned quickly once Peter forced it to open up and adopt Western ways, and rapidly exerted itself as a military power.
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