While Carolly Erickson does a commendable job in addressing the topics of the time she spends more time on the associates of Queen Mary then with the Queen herself. Perhaps this is because of the lack of information on the Queen's early years but perhaps a more scholarly assessment of her reign and how it affected England in the long term would contribute more to the success of the book. Erickson does a very good job in presenting an unbiased view of the woman who has been degraded in 350 years of English Protestant Literature. While Mary did have her strong religious convictions that did bring many to the stake she was not a "bloody" tyrant as the Protestants would like her to be remembered. Her successor Elizabeth deserves this title more than this great Queen. Erickson however does not write enough on two famous executions during her reign, those of Lady Jane Grey and Archbishop Cranmer. It seems that these 2 proponents of the Protestant cause deserved more then the passing reference to their exections. On the whole, the book was extremely entertaning and well written. Erickson has a way to capture her audience and evoke both pathos and awe for the only Catholic Queen of England.

In Carolly Erickson's "Bloody Mary", the life of Mary Tudor, the author provides an in-depth analysis of a monarch much maligned in her own -- and our -- time. From her early years as Henry VIII's cherished daughter, to his rejection of her and her mother (Catherine of Aragon), to the parade of wives Henry used and abused, Erickson paints a vivid picture of English court life during the mid-1500s. Sometimes, the picture is too vivid and the digressions from the main story of Mary and her trials and tribulations are too extensive. By the time Mary miraculously becomes queen in 1553, the reader is exhausted; the author also seems to have run out of steam, and all the painstaking research and background give way to an almost cursory examination of Mary's brief reign. The book also stresses Mary's Catholic piety a little too much, perhaps as a justification of the persecution of Protestants that earned her the nickname of "Bloody". On the good side, Erickson makes Mary a real person -- a very troubled real person; on the slightly negative side, Mary gets lost in the details provided on the court, the machinations, and the politics of the age. You'll need a lot of time and patience to finish this book, but the reward is an excellent interpretation of a woman who paved the way for her much more popular sister: Elizabeth I.

Carolly Erickson goes beyond the stereotype and searches for Mary Tudor's real character in Bloody Mary. An in-depth view of the beliefs of Mary's educators gives the reader a fascinating glimpse of Mary's motives and the ideas that shaped her life. Mary emerges as a strong woman, challanged by society's strictures and the demands she placed upon herself.

Erickson tends to gloss over Mary's role in the many executions that took place during her reign, but this book is an excellent read for anyone interested in Mary's life.

I got interested in Russian history after going to the Soviet Union when I was in 8th grade and then the Ukraine when I was in college. Then there is the fact that my husband is also of Russian descent. I picked Catherine the Great because she had such an influence and ruled for a long time. I can't wait to read Erickson's new book about another Russian royal family.

It is rare for an author of a biography to write such that you think you are reading a fiction romance story, but that is just what Carolly Erickson has done. I was drawn into the story of Catherine and her thoughts and feelings from the first page. From her mother's ambition, to her own ambition, to the murder of her husband, to her many lovers. The story just flows in an awesome fashion. The only dissappointment was that the book seemed to gloss over Catherine's many acomplishments as a ruler. It did seem like the book was mosty about her early life and not enough about her rule.

This book will take a while to get throught, it is not an easy read, but is well worth it to understand the history of a people who are such a mystery to most American people.

Having read all of Carolly's books, when "Great Catherine" was released, I again was transported to another place and time by the writing of Ms. Erickson. The author has a gift for making history come alive. It's as if you are right there listening in on the political intrigue and court gossip of Catherine's day. She also strips away the unrealistic views of the great monarch passed down by those who observed her from afar. "Great Catherine" is a "great" book and worthy of your time - even if you know nothing of Russian history! Carolly continues to be one of the best historical biographers of our day

Erickson writes with authority in the realm of history, with an impressive list of books, under her belt, including, but not limited to Bloody Mary, Great Harry, Mistress Anne, Bonnie Prince Charlie, The First Elizabeth as well as many others. She is well respected in her field and uses a variety of primary sources when ever possible. In Great Catherine, Erickson uses primary sources including, but not limited to, Catherine's own memoirs as well as other writings of Catherine. Erickson also took advantage of other sources such as letters as well as dispatches of visiting ambassadors, letters and memoirs of contemporaries, both Russian and European, and contemporary descriptions of Russian society and the Russian court travelers, as well as political and administrative documents. Catherine is presented in a very human light throughout the entire book. In the beginning she is presented as a precocious little girl in the court of King Frederick, saying for all to hear and much to her mother's embarrassment, "Why does the king have such a short jacket? He's rich enough to afford a longer one isn't he?"(p.1) Later, when she was fourteen, and once again in the Court of King Frederick, just before embarking for Russia, to be presented to the Empress Elizabeth to see if she was indeed a suitable bride for Peter the third, Princess Sophie made easy conversation with the King and "amazed the court". (p.32) During her stay in Russia, Sophie became gravely ill and was nursed back to health by the Empress herself. The two became quite close and Sophie soon became the Empress's favorite and upon her indoctrination into the Russian Orthodox Church, was renamed by the Empress after her own mother, and second wife to Peter the Great. She was no longer Princess Sophie, but Grand Duchess Catherine of Russia. The mother-daughter relationship did not last as long as Catherine had hoped, for the Empress the suffered from paranoia and was constantly in a state of anxiety in great fear of being overthrown just as she had overthrown her predecessor. She turned on Catherine and blamed her alone for not having provided an heir and became increasingly cruel to her. It seems that after two years the royal couple had not in fact consummated the marriage. It was rumored that Peter was impotent or sterile, perhaps from the severe bout with the pox that he had suffered. Regardless Catherine knew that an heir was necessary and if she did not provide one then she would become unnecessary and would be disposed of as easily as she was chosen. She became pregnant with a child and was once again in the good graces with Empress Elizabeth. The child was a product of her love affair, with Sergei Saltykov. (p.121) Once he had accomplished the deed, he was sent away from Catherine, just as her son Paul was taken away from her once he was born. It seemed to Catherine that the Empress took great pleasure in her power to arrange the lives of those in her court. Since Catherine and Peter were estranged and he treated her with the utmost cruelty, she felt no guilt in taking a lover. Saltykov was only the fist of many lovers for Catherine and she soon was in an impassioned affair with Gregory Orlov, "a handsome hero of Zorndoff" and a "lieutenant in the Ismailovsky guards", who had four brothers that were also well respected in their regiments, that had political sway with the men in their command.(p.188) It was the Orlov brothers that helped Catherine in a successful a coup de tat against Peter, soon after the death of the Empress Elizabeth. She and Gregory had a son, Alexis Gregorovich, which in Russian means, Alexis son of Gregory. Catherine had a unusually great appetite for the opposite sex, but managed a voracious sex life as well as managing the affairs of Russia both on a national level as well as an international level. She wanted to restore the splendor of the old Byzantine Empire. So single-minded was she that she named her first grandson after the city of Constantinople, she called this her "Greek project" and talked of it "incessantly". (p.335) Through her reading of Voltaire, Diderot as well Montesquieu she "acquired lofty idea's about reform and she did bring some reform to Russia, but was sure to not let it go unchecked. She was truly horrified by the Pugachev Rebellion and quickly put it down and laid aside some of her idea's about reform. Erickson writes in a chronological order that is clear and concise, allowing easy to understanding of the many "plot" changes and diverse "characters" that filled the life of the Princess that would become the Empress of Russia. Erickson's usage of quotes is quite smooth and helps to give the feel of a novel is being read instead of historical biography. Some biographers of Catherine's found her sex life to be a major topic throughout their biographies. While Erickson does explain Catherine's various liaisons' she does not make them her entire focus. Erickson emphasizes the various deeds that made Catherine become known as Catherine the Great, such as her victories over the long undefeated Turks and her ideas on reform. Erickson shows that while under the rule of Catherine the Great, Russia experienced economic abundance as well as political power and stability. Carolly Erickson's version of Great Catherine stands out as a balanced and well-researched book. She supports her work with primary sources, such as Catherine's own memoirs and letters of state. This book is well written in clearly organized fashion. It feels like a roller coaster of a novel with all the intrigue, death, torture, betrayal and power and sex that is required to gain and keep a reader's attention and the great thing about the book, Great Catherine, is that it is all true.

Erickson's avowed practice of giving equal weight to each part of a subject's life, rather than concentrating on the period when the subject was "famous," causes two major problems this time. First, there is (or was at the time of Erickson's work) little or no documentation of Anne Boleyn's early life; thus, for much of the book we are repeatedly confronted with statements of how Anne "must have" felt, reacted, behaved, etc. Second, the short period in which Anne strutted upon the world stage skims by far too quickly, with too little detail. True, Anne "must have" felt that way about events herself -- but surely the benefit of time and perspective is that we can linger and delve into the subject. Perhaps it is impossible to write a really adequate biography of Anne Boleyn.

In a manner which I have found unfortunately typical of Carolly Erickson's writing, "Mistress Anne" contains many details about court life (including "trivia" not typical of books on the subject), yet not enough about Anne herself. The rather rambling references to, for example, Anne's days at the French court became tedious. My impression was of a collection of material which could be interesting in a "classroom lecture" setting, where it is assumed that the hearers are studying the entire era and would enjoy tidbits not found in their textbooks, but which makes boring reading on its own.

While this book was a good source of information on Anne Boleyn's world, the facts given about Anne herself were sketchy at best. In spite of fascinating details such as descriptions of the French court where Anne grew up and the accounts of the court procedures of Henry VIII's divorce from Katharine of Aragon, one never really gets the feel of Anne as a real person. The lack of information about Anne's day-to-day life is one reason for this, but the fact remains that this is simply not one of Erickson's best biographies.

Enjoy this book, but read Antonia Fraser's "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" for a truer portrait of Anne Boleyn.

Far from being "as exciting as a novel," this pedestrian re-telling of what should be a fascinating story is bland and far from insightful. The author's evident unfamiliarity with even basic military and naval terminology leads one to wonder about the accuracy of other elements. (A ship-of-the-line is a "gunboat.") The Recorded Books version is read in a sneering, condescending delivery by an Englishman who whistles into the microphone every second sentence, producing a "nails on the blackboard" sensation which accentuates the discomfort.

This was a good summary of a lot of secondary source material on Bonnie Prince Charlie, condensed into a fairly short biography. It's an enjoyable leisurely read, but don't look for depth, great detail, or anything like original thought about Prince Charlie and what he meant in the context of Scottish, English, European, or Catholic history in the 18th century. This is not a good text for anyone already familiar with the Jacobites and looking for any new scholarship on the subject.

The eldest son of James, the Old Pretender, Bonnie Price Charlie was raised to believe that the throne of England and Scotland was his destiny. Born in Italy and used as a pawn of Louis XV against George II, Charles was seen as a promising young man. In his early twenties, he sailed to Scotland and was able to convince several Highland chiefs to support his cause. Numerous victories came swiftly because the English were unprepared for the various attacks. However, once the English determined that the threat was real, Prince Charles and his troops were quickly over run. He returned to France where he was asked to leave and again settled in Italy. With no ambitions left to him, he quickly dissapated into an alcoholic daze. He fathered one child by a Scottish woman and later married a German princess but that marriage quickly soured. His later years were redeemed somewhat as his daughter Charlotte came to his aid. He died, leaving his youngest brother Henry as the last Stuart pretender to the throne. Henry was a Cardinal and therefore fathered no children so with his death the Stuart dynasty came to an end.

I enjoyed the book and found it useful for someone with limited knowledge of this time period. Not very detailed with but a good overview of events.

How hard it is to imagine what the perceptions of people more than four hundred years past must have been - but this is precisely what Erickson tries to convey to the modern reader in this slim scholarly volume.

For those intrigued with early Christian thought and exploits, the bulk of this book will be fascinating. There are surprising chapters depicting the early Christians as violent, often drunken, and sometimes clueless as to the rules of their religion.

Chapters one, two, and eight of Erickson's exploration into the mindset and cultural personality of medieval times held the most interest for this reader. The first and second chapter's focus is on the enchanted world and the visionary imagination of the medieval mind. Here we learn that the boundaries between real and imaginery were blurred and the acceptance of multidimensionality ruled. Alchemy, not science; astrology and divination, not computers, filled the consciousness of these medieval folks. A world in which the imagination was allowed to flourish is what Erickson presents as her hypothesis...and this is very hard for a modern mind to truly comprehend. The author states, at the end of chapter two, that the following chapters only contain occasional illustrations of her theory, and so the book becomes disjointed. It reads as a catalog of monks, priests, kings, overlords, land divisions, and more. Informative and intriguing, but the focus of the book gets lost.

Chapter eight explores the situation of women, offering a limited, grim world documented by misogynistic Christian writers. Except for the beguine movement, which offered single women a chance to share lives together in self-supporting group homes, women could only take religious vows or marriage. So much for a woman who was self-determined or self-supporting!

This is a book designed to make the reader think. It's easy to see how different our world view has become in which science and technology, not the imagination, define what is real. But that change in world view doesn't mean human emotions and vices have changed that much in the past four hundred years. Reflecting on the choices people had then made me grateful to be alive in this century.

I have been a fan of Carolly Erickson's wonderful biographies since I stumbled across her "The First Elizabeth" years ago. Each one of her volumes on the Tudors was a gem of scholarly research and captivating history. Lately, however, since she began her series on "Great Women," including Josephine, Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great and now Tsarina Alexandra, Erickson's work has slipped further and further into mere popular biography, offering "warts and all" characterizations of these women, variously thrust into greatness, greed, foolish decisions, vainity, all with disaterous results one way or another. They are fascinating women and readable books, but they verge on history lite, and I expect more from Erickson. In "Alexandera" there is a tendency to glide over major issues and events to focus on Alexandra's painful search for religious and moral guidance, making her appear a most unpleasant and naive woman. The index, moreover, fails to have single entry for Alexandra, which seems odd, since the book is about her. The index also makes no mention of Ekaterinaberg, even though the murders there are recounted. Sadly also missing is any mention of Faberge -- the text mentions jewlery, but nothing specific and certainly no Easter Eggs -- an odd omission. The book is still worth the read, but it is not Carolly Erickson at her best.

I definitely confess to having a weakness for all things Russian including accounts of the Romanovs. While I wasn't sure what to expect from Carolly Erickson, I was extremely pleased with her most recent book, "Alexandra: The Last Tsarina". Other reviews have labeled the work "history lite" and I do see what they mean - very little time spent on Alexandra's views and influences politically (for which there exists substantial documentation as viewed in the Romanov classic "Nicholas and Alexandra" by Robert K. Massie) - it would have taken up too much page space describing political climates and individual personalitites. Nicholas also appears to be an intellectual lightweight with very little mind of his own. While he was easily influenced, there exists a decent amount of material indicating Nicholas' frustrations with his wife and her often highly emotional views (see Massie). However, Erickson should not be faulted for her excellent and highly readable prose. Russia of this era truely comes alive and a real sense of Alexandra's world helps aid the reader in making decisions about her behavior.

Also contradicting a below review, I definitely feel that Erickson's book has brought out at least two major new contributions to the scholarly work about the Romanovs. Namely, bringing to light the fixation of Nicholas and Alexandra with the French mystic, Phillippe Vachot, one time butcher then hypnotist and charlatan to the aristocracy. Their reliance on his judgements and spiritual healing so early in their marriage and reign is incredibly predictive of their later dependency on Rasputin, down to their referring to Vachot as "our friend" in correspondance to one another. The fact that Vachot stated prior to his death that he would be reincarnated in another man who would come to give them spiritual guidance, all but cemented the later easy acceptance of Rasputin. The second of Erickson's contribution centers around a more detailed account of Alexandra's ongoing health problems (someone with chronic leg pain is going to hate balls and receptions involving hours spent on her feet, regardless of her shyness) many of them mental in nature. Also, how easily accepted drugs of their period (barbituates and cocaine) were used by both Nicholas and Alexandra as little was known of side effects by physicians of the time. This drug use (which occurs right around WWI and the downfall of the monarchy) could only have greatly infuenced decisions made in a completely autocratic government.

An excellent work and one worthy of reading by any Russian scholar interested in the time period and Romanov dynasty.

Despite what the other reviewers wrote, Carrolly Erickson is an extremely gifted historian and author and ALEXANDRA is a probing but sympathetic look at a tragic historical figure. As is to be expected with Ms. Erickson's books, the writing is vivid and engaging. Ms. Erickson took a complex subject matter -- not just Tsarina Alexandra, but the Russian political climate of her time -- and made it easy to understand for the casual historian.

An observation: I have long been a student/collector of all things relating to Marie Antoinette and I have read Ms. Erickson's book TO THE SCAFFOLD. I was surprised she did not make the connections between Antoinette and Alexandra - for surely there were many. Both women were vilified by their husband's subjects. Antoinette was called the Austrian Whore, Alexandra the German Whore. Both women attempted to learn French - and both women struggled with the language. Both women responded to criticism in childish ways (Antoinette, in leading a frivilous life, thereby lending credence to the pamphleteers charges. Alexandra, by drawing spiteful portraits). Perhaps Ms. Erickson would consider writing a book titled: The Shared Traits of Tragic Queens - Josephine, Antoinette, Alexandra

My only negative comment would be that Ms. Erickson seemed to provide little original information. A perusal of her FOOTNOTES shows that she relied heavily on previously written biographies.

Still, all in all, a fabulously enthralling read.