Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie

Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie is a 584-page hardcover published by Atheneum, New York.  Stated first edition of 1967.  The dust jacket is price clipped, shows shelf wear and small closed tears along the edges.  Inside, the pages are clean and unmarked. Book Summary History offers few eras richer in drama than the last years of Imperial Russia.  Tsar Nicholas II, ruler of one sixth of the earth and more than 120 million Russians, presided over a glittering world of huge palaces, lavish balls, and incomparable luxury.  For Nicholas and his golden-haired wife Alexandra--Queen Victoria's favorite granddaughter, the happiest moment of their reign was the long-awaited birth, on August 12, 1904, of a male heir, their only son, Alexis.  Yet just six weeks late fate crushed the Imperial parents with a ruthless blow.  Seemingly without cause, Alexis began to hemorrhage from the navel.  The diagnosis did not take long:  from his great-grandmother Queen Victoria, the tiny Tsarevich h