Peter the Great: His Life and World

Robert Kinloch Massie III (1929–2019) was an American author and historian born in Versailles, Kentucky, best known for his acclaimed biographies of Russian imperial figures including Nicholas and Alexandra (1967), Peter the Great (1980), and Catherine the Great (2011). A Yale graduate and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, he began as a journalist for Newsweek and Saturday Evening Post before dedicating his career to Russian history, inspired partly by his son's hemophilia paralleling Tsarevich Alexei's condition. He won two Pulitzer Prizes for Biography or Autobiography—for Peter the Great and Catherine the Great—and served as president of the Authors Guild from 1987 to 1991.