Alexandra

Just as Edvard Radzinsky wrote the ultimate account of Nicholas II in The Last Tsar and Robert Massie memorably described the imperial marriage in Nicholas and Alexandra, Carolly Erickson has created an indelible portrait of Alexandra, the woman blamed by contemporaries for the downfall of the Romanovs.

Under Erickson's expert scrutiny the full dimensions of the empress's singular psychology are laid bare: her childhood bereavement; her long struggle to marry the deeply flawed man she loved, Nicholas; the anguish of her pathological shyness; her painful, bruising conflicts with her in-laws; her increasing eccentricities and loss of self as she became more and more preoccupied with matters of faith; and her growing dependence on a series of occult mentors, the most notorious of whom was Rasputin.

Alexandra's thorny personal story unfolds against the turbulent backdrop of Russian history in the last decades before the Revolution of 1917, a time of opulent palaces, bejeweled aristocrats, and lavish wealth—and also of anarchist bombings and pervasive violence and fear. While the rich of St. Petersburg were carried away in a frenzy of fin-de-siècle merrymaking, the empress—acutely feeling the burden of being her husband's emotional mainstay—sought answers to Russia's overwhelming problems through mediums and charlatans. We also learn of how Alexandra sought to find healing aids for her hemophiliac son in Rasputin's many and mysterious powers.