This was nkt the most engaging book to read, and focused more on what was happening surrounding the Tsar and his family. The context of the wider social and political climate was interesting enough, and not necessarily what a lot of books on the Romanovs tend to focus on, but the end result of this book is a lot of names and concepts getting thrown about and an overall dull writing style that made it hard to want to finish.

If you love reading about the Romanov’s, you will love this book. The era fascinates me. The book didn’t fail my love of them. This is a new author to me.

If there is one thing I am absolutely sure of about author Tsuyoshi Hasegawa after reading his book The Last Tsar, it is that he is not very impressed with Nicholas II. I was able to arrive at this very insightful conclusion mainly because he says so in the preface of the book. Hasegawa wants this book to be the definitive account of Nicholas II's abdication and how it was not the foregone conclusion many other scholars make it out to be. Hasegawa believes a better leader could have changed the ending, but Nicholas was not that guy.

There is no question of scholarship when it comes to Hasegawa. He is a recognized expert on the topic of the February Revolution and it shows in the book. No detail is overlooked and his conclusions come with a significant amount of sources. No, I didn't actually check them (ain't nobody got time for that), but his reputation precedes him.

Ultimately, two things kept me from enjoying this as much as I had hoped. First, Hasegawa's negative views of Nicholas and Alexandra are so bluntly stated that I was turned off by it. It's not that I disagree with his characterization. It is a small minority (if anyone at all) who would argue that Nicholas was a great ruler or that Alexandra was a positive overall influence. I personally feel that an eminent historian like Hasegawa doesn't need to put so fine a point on it. Give the reader the story with the sources and let them make their conclusions based on your presentation. The other problem was length. This book is too long. In trying to tell the whole story, Hasegawa doesn't leave out any names or actions once the abdication drama starts. It bogs down the narrative horribly. Part I was great and part II was a slog. I found myself thinking about all the cuts which could have been made to knock off 100 pages. Hasegawa could have made his points without belaboring them and chronicling every action no matter how frivolous.

There is such thing as too much of a good thing and Hasegawa goes a bit too far in showing off his scholarship. I certainly would not warn off anyone from The Last Tsar, but it might only be for true nerds of the time period.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Basic Books.)

"The Last Tsar: The Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs," by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, a well known scholar in this field, is a refreshing breath of air in an area very much in need of it. I am working from an ARC published by Basic Books, and my first reaction to this well-documented and very detailed work of revisionist scholarship is deep satisfaction. It is not by any means a conventional biography, or worse, hagiography, but is, instead, a very tightly focused look at the last Tsar's failure as an Autocrat and the consequences of his actions. The familiar cast of characters seen in so many works are present here: the hemophiliac heir to the throne, the overbearing foreign princess who became Tsarina, and of course the seriously disturbing "holy man" known as Rasputin. What makes this read so valuable is the author's ability to look at the events leading up to and through the February Revolution with a fresh set of eyes unburdened by the sort of romanticism that too often substitutes for objectivity in many books on this subject that tend to examine it more broadly and paint a word picture which often overlooks important details and the consequences attached to them.. Here, the actions of the Stavka (the Russian Imperial High Command charged with conducting Russian operations against the Central Powers during World War I) and the extended Imperial family (almost always overlooked in conventional biographies) offer startling insights into the Tsar's psychology and the pressures on him. No student of the fall of the Romanov Dynasty and the long term consequences for the rest of us should overlook this book. The scholarship is impressive; the writing is sharp and on point, and it is abundantly clear that the author is the master of his material. I recommend acquisition for any serious collection.