Gyula Szvák

I don't know if it was the translation or what, but this book was full of sentences like "In fact his success was mainly due to the soothsayer's sensing the public mood, readily recognizing him as the tsarevich." (page 99) But otherwise this short book was chock-full of information about the sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic stories of false tsars and even occasional false false tsars -- guys who pretended to be the guy who pretended to be the tsar. I had no idea there were so many of these! During the Time of Troubles for instance, there were no fewer than FIVE False Dmitris, in addition to the (dead) real one. Anyone interested in Russian history or royal pretenders will enjoy this. Just try to ignore the grammatical errors.… (meer)