Full name: The Romanovs: Love, Power and Tragedy

Authors: Manfred Knodt, Alexander Bokhanov Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Amazon Goodreads ISBNs: 9780952164401 095216440X

I love, love, love this book. It's a coffee table book, filled with the most beautiful photographs of the Romanovs, most of them family ones (versus official pictures). The quality is perfect. Most of them you can't find anywhere else. And apart from photographs, there are a lot of images of letters, journals, paintings made by the Romanovs - which are my absolutely favourite part of the book. I just think it's particularly special to read their letters in their own handwriting (which, especially in Nicholas' case, is 100% clear). My favourite is the back of an envelope from a letter Nicholas sent to Alexandra when they were engaged - he just writes "I love you my darling!!!". The text, however, is not remarkable at all, and you can easily identify some translation mistakes (grammar mistakes, excerpts from diaries that have been published elsewhere that are wrong here, phrases that simply don't make any sense). But that really doesn't matter, because the pictures are what make this book so fantastic.It is, however, very difficult to find. I think it took me about three years to find a reasonable deal online, and it was $60+ (which was awesome, because the price is usually $100+). Worth every penny!