Andrei Maylunas

Take this book's title seriously: it really is only the story of Nicholas and Alexandra, told through their letters and diaries, as well as those of their friends and family, with various supporting contextual documents. Each letter or diary entry is silently edited so you never know if you're reading the entire thing or a small piece, except in extreme instances when the authors include no more than a sentence or two per diary entry/letter. The editing makes for a concentrated, dramatic, tragic story: so in love, so destined to be apart, at last happy together, so many daughters, finally an heir . . . then, well. It reads quite novelistically. But tragic stories and novels are constructed; history is messy, with multiple, intersecting plots and characters and real-life ambiguities. This story is too streamlined for any of that reality to come through (the editors charmingly discuss this in their introduction). Though we're certainly aware of the outside world, it's vague and at a remove (perhaps as Nicky and Alix perceived it?) and so the book feels dream-like rather than historical. If this were a novel, I'd give it a 5. If a history, let's say a 3. So as a hybrid I'd give it a 4. Then I remember it had me reading 200 pages until 2:00 am and I knock it up a half star.… (meer)

This collection of mostly informal photographs of Russia's last royal family is pretty astonishing. Apparently most of these are snapshots taken by members of the family, and are revelatory on several levels. As always, the camera loves the Grand Duchesses, but the real star here is Czar Nicholas himself. We see him riding piggyback on some of his royal relatives, get a good look at his tongue, and, astonishingly, he's even nude, as is his son Alexei. His daughters usually play it a little closer to the vest, but family clown Anastasia also shows off her tongue, and pretends to levitate and be a weightlifter. An introduction and the captions, by a distant royal relative, are informative both as to the people in the photos and as photography criticism; for once in a photography book, they don't get in the way at all.… (meer)