Peter the Great

His Life and World

By: Robert K. Massie

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 43 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

This superbly told story brings to life one of the most remarkable rulers––and men––in all of history and conveys the drama of his life and world. The Russia of Peter's birth was very different from the Russia his energy, genius, and ruthlessness shaped. Crowned co-Tsar as a child of ten, after witnessing bloody uprisings in the streets of Moscow, he would grow up propelled by an unquenchable curiosity, everywhere looking, asking, tinkering, and learning, fired by Western ideas.

We see Peter in his 20s traveling "incognito" with his ambassadors to the courts of Europe; as the victorious soldier proclaimed Emperor; as the simple workman at his forge; and as the visionary statesman who single-handedly created a formidable world power. Impetuous and stubborn, bawdy and stern, relentless in his perseverance, he was capable of the greatest generosity and the greatest cruelty.

©1980 Robert K. Massie (P)1991 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Enthralling.... As fascinating as any novel and more so than most!" ( New York Times Book Review)

Great story poorly read

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Great story, you could not make this stuff up

What other book might you compare Peter the Great to and why?

Catherine the Great, also good history, well researched and full of interesting details

Would you be willing to try another one of Frederick Davidson’s performances?

Only if he did not have to struggle unsuccessfully with Russian names. Here his lack of Russian was very distracting as the names were often almost incomprehensible to anyone knowing any Russian at all.

Great "read"

Would you listen to Peter the Great again? Why?

Pretty good read. Great story to tell and it's well written and well narrated. Peter was great.

Fresh Perspective on European History

Robert K. Massie more than delivers on the promising title of this sweeping book. Massie presents an intense man with the vision, the autocratic means, and the personal perseverance to pull his nation into the modern world. Fascinating detours include descriptions of the histories of the powers with which Peter the Great interacts, summaries of the international issues that concerned them, and descriptions of the social and economic conditions of the day. Presented from the perspective of Eastern Europe, the early eighteenth century becomes something more than British and French concern over the Spanish succession. The end of this lengthy exposition left me longing for more.

The excellence of Massie???s prose was unfortunately undermined by Frederick Davidson???s pompous reading. I would have expected a professional narrator to moderate his non-standard pronunciation of words like clerk (not clark) and issue (not issssssue). More egregiously, Davidson seems wholly incapable of providing character voices for quotations: even Peter the Great is rendered in a child-like, even effeminate, falsetto.

Great pronunciation!

Would you consider the audio edition of Peter the Great to be better than the print version?

Yes, because I can listen while working at my desk.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Peter the Great?

I was surprised that he beheaded so many traitors. I never knew about that.

This is one I'll listen to again

I really enjoyed this book. Robert Massie covers the history of everything going on that had any influence on Peter. I would recommend this book to anyone who knows little or nothing about Russian history. It's a good story and you get a picture of life in the 16th-17th century.

WORST NARRATOR EVER! BEWARE!!

Do NOT buy this book unless you are SURE you can can listen to the narrator for over 40 hours. His lisp is troublesome, and his reading is so poor and lazy that many of his sentences just fade away, so it’s impossible to hear their endings. The narrator absolutely ruins the book! I’m so angry. I hate to waste this time struggling to interpret this garbled reading, but the book was well written and I wanted to hear it. How annoying. What a horrible thing to do to a good book.

Excellent Account!

This is my second book about Peter the Great. I absolutely love this book. The author not only tells you about the life of Peter the Great in great detail but he also goes into all the various surrounding challenges and activities that Peter dealt with in detail. It's very similar in its depth to a historian like David McCullough. I couldn't wait to get back to this book every time I had the pause it. Peter the Great truly was one of history's greatest character is bringing Russia from the depths of fur wearing barbarity to the modern European sensibilities of the 18th century. Especially enjoyed all of the detail about Peters battles with Charles the 12th. I knew very little bit about Sweden at the time and it was very enjoyable to hear about this period. If you decide to read or listen to this book you will get sucked in and you will start telling your friends and family members stories about Peter the Great the whole time you're in the middle of it!

Narrator Ruins an Incredible Book

An incredible book. Possibly the best history writer I've ever read. The Narration is absolute garbage. The recording is even worse. There are portions where the audio just clicks of half way through a word and then cuts back on awkwardly and then the narrator continues on sounding like a pompous arrogant aristocrat from the 18th century of England. You can almost hear the powder on his whig. it's a shame as this is one of 5he best histories ever written. I wish they would have the narrator from Catherine the Great (same author) read this.

Peter, it seems, was so great he barely seem human

Any additional comments?

In War and Peace, Tolstoy spends a lot of time explaining how one man, no matter how "great", can not actually change the course of events to any large degree. A humble man, by himself, can live a moral life and do as good as he can for the people around him, but he's not going to change the course of world history. Tolstoy argues events in human history are the outcomes of millions of interconnected threads made up of uncountable influences ranging from basic geography and weather to the less tangible such as the mood and passions of a nation. He argues that the "greater" the man, the more bound he is to these threads and the less able he is to actually alter and lead the flow of history.

Yet the life of Peter the Great, as written by Massie, proves otherwise to Tolstoy's philosophy. Here is a man who, if we are to believe Massie (and I do), almost single handed dragged all of Russia out of the shadowy, mystical, musty dark-ages into an enlightened Western world. Through his sheer force of personality, temper, God-given right to rule absolutely, and his never ending supply of energy did more in a lifetime than perhaps any man who has ever lived.

In just over 5 decades he drastically reformed his nation's religion, built a Navy where there had not even been a single ocean going vessel before him, founded universities, created an environment in which women - previously unable to function in society - could express their will legally and socially - and, most famously, built St. Petersburg on the sea where before there had only been a swamp owned by Sweden.

And in every detail of Peter's life Massie goes to extraordinary lengths to explain and enlighten us how and what Peter did - except one: Peter as a man.

What stuck me about the book is how even after everything Peter did and left behind, I don't know if I can really say I got a clear picture of him as an individual. We have all the idiosyncrasies here: his temper and his nervous twitch, his desire to put aside pomp and ceremony in exchange for simplicity, his singular love of the sea (which it seems nobody else in all of Russia shared with him), but he comes across almost as a machine through all this.

Peter, it seems, was so great, that he barely seemed human. Yes, he had his share of faults and he could also be a warm, friendly, prankster, but he was always the Czar and I felt like one of his subjects halfway into the book.

And perhaps that's the point Massie wanted to make. No matter who was being spoken of in the book (and a lot of time is given to King Charles of Sweden; Peter's respected enemy), I always felt like Peter was driving the chariot, whip in hand, and I was his beast of burden. No matter how close we get to him he still always seems that much further away. And I suspect that is how many who knew him felt, too.

Strange, too, that Peter is Russia's greatest leader because he's the least Russian of them all. He so badly wanted his country to be European and to be taken seriously whereas generations later (after Napoleon's invasion) Russians wanted to pull back from the west. All those western cultural values Peter loved were seen as decadent by men like Leo Tolstoy (whose grandparent, Peter, plays a very important role here).

And so, once Peter died and his almost super-human influence was put into the ground, Russia did her best to become Russian once again, though Russia would never be the same, either. For all this "great" man did in opposition to Tolstoy's philosophy, he never really was able to really make Russia a part of Europe. Russia would always be, in a way, 400 years behind the rest of the world and proud of it too. The Russians didn't want someone to change them; change seems to go against what being Russian is at heart.

But like the final dramatic scene in the book where Peter leaps into the freezing ocean to save a floundering ship, Peter did his best for a nation that did need him otherwise she would have been conquered again - probably by Charles - or would have faded into obscurity.

He was a remarkable man and though what I could learn about him I don't know if I like (he intimidates me), I respect him as a man as best you can respect an absolute autocrat.

Wonderful book and should be required reading for learning about Russian history. No wonder this book won so many awards.

Terrific.

This history of Peter the Great reminded me of the way Robert A. Caro writes his Lyndon Johnson biography. It contains all the significant and fascinating historical documentation but rather than the common run of dry and desiccated marshaling of "facts" as is the misfortune of most of this type of genre, this one is a narrative gem. I felt like I was a fly on the wall observing the conversations and the interactions, the personal struggles and triumphs of the subject for whom I've never had much interest. I finished the book feeling like I glimpsed Peter the Great as a person rather than a historical figure and I enjoyed the book thoroughly. Also while Frederick Davidson's urbane British accent might not be for everyone, I personally find him a superb narrator. His pacing is excellent, he doesn't sound like he is gathering saliva in his mouth ( something I can't stand) and pronunciation of all foreign names and terms is IMPECCABLE, something that cannot be said of most other narrators.