Reviews
Praise for Former People "Smith's engaging and, at times, heartbreaking account is an essential record of loss." - The New Yorker "History at its most epic and its most achingly personal." - Andrew Solomon, Salon, "This brilliantly written, meticulously researched account of the life of Rasputin is the best, most complete and accurate I have ever read. Step by step, day by day, week by week, Douglas Smith tells the story from its humble beginnings, through its obscene sexual chapters, to its violent end. He describes how a peasant became 'our Friend' to the last emperor and empress of Russia. He explains why this dependency came at a terrible cost for the imperial couple, for their children, for Russia, and for the twentieth-century world. Readers will begin by saying that this is an impossible story to believe. They will read on because, in Douglas Smith's mesmerizing telling, it must be believed. And because it did happen." --Robert K. Massie, author of Catherine the Great "In his research, comprehensive to the nth degree, Douglas Smith has dug up previously unseen archives, followed previously unexplored leads, and connected the dots across the Russian landscape. They're dots of blood. Rasputin reveals the true character of the man without minimizing his malign hold on the feckless Romanovs." --Ken Kalfus, author of The Commissariat of Enlightenment "It is hard to imagine a historical figure more barnacled with myth than Rasputin. Douglas Smith unravels Rasputin's complex narrative in unprecedented detail, showing how he was a kind of chimera onto which could be hung all the ills of a disintegrating Russia. In the process, Smith vividly exposes the astonishing blindness of the ruling class that made its tragic end inevitable. A brilliant achievement." --Rosemary Sullivan, author of Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva "In his magisterial, exhaustively researched work on Rasputin, Douglas Smith paints a rich, detailed portrait of one of history's most fascinating individuals while also chronicling the dramatic last days of the tsar. It's a wondrous read." --Neal Bascomb, author of The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb "A big book about a big figure in the demise of tsarism. Douglas Smith supplies chapter and verse on the extraordinary life of Grigory Rasputin, the eminence grise behind the Romanov throne. Without denying the salacious and corrupt ways of the 'holy man,' the book brilliantly and thoughtfully defends Rasputin against the worst of the myths that swirled around him. A tour de force." --Robert Service, author of The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991 and Lenin: A Biography "The most complete and masterful study of Rasputin that I've read. Douglas Smith's work is not only extraordinarily readable, but rich in detail." --Robert Alexander, author of The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar "Some years ago, when working on a historical novel, I had to read all the existing Rasputin biographies--and they do abound, in all literary styles and in many languages. What a pity that Douglas Smith's Rasputin had not yet been published; it would have saved me a lot of time. If you are interested in the story of the Romanovs' pet prophet, this is the book to read." --Boris Akunin, author of The Coronation "A prodigious piece of scholarship. Douglas Smith's exhaustive and forensic examination of a wealth of new and previously unseen evidence finally lays to rest the tired old myth of 'the mad monk' and rightly positions Rasputin as a crucial figure in late Imperial Russian history." --Helen Rappaport, author of The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra
