ebooks My Dear Daughter: Rabbi Benjamin Slonik and the Education of Jewish Women in Sixteenth-Century Poland (Monographs of the Hebrew Union College) by Edward Fram in History

Description

In Paris and London; the crowds hailed him as the man who had conquered Napoleon; as the liberator of Europe; and as a benevolent; enlightened monarch. At home he came to be feared as a reactionary; oppressive autocrat in a country where millions of serfs were still treated as little more than personal property. A grandson of Catherine the Great; a conspirator in the assassination of his own father; and an idealistic and ineffective participant at the Congress of Vienna; Alexander was torn all his life between his liberal illusions and the hard realities of autocratic Russia. In a brilliant biography of one of the most unorthodox of Russia's tsars; Henri Troyat -- winner of the Prix Populiste and the coveted Prix Goncourt -- delivers a masterful portrait of Europe during a momentous period in its modern history. "[Troyat's] broad-brush narrative restores to center stage important personalities and their interplay in the politics of the era." -- James H. Billington; The New York Times Book Review "[A] briskly moving; richly illustrated; flesh-and-blood portrait." -- Publishers Weekly "Troyat's biography of Alexander ... turns out to be more enthralling than most of the novels I've read lately." -- Pamela Marsh; The Christian Science Monitor