Dora's Book of the Month: September: CZARS: RUSSIA'S RULERS FOR OVER ONE THOUSAND YEARS By James P. Duffy & Vincent L. Ricci

CZARS: RUSSIA'S RULERS FOR OVER ONE THOUSAND YEARSThis book depicts the history of Russia's history into four distinct periods:
1) First period: Ascendancy of Kiev (now known as the Ukraine)
2) Second period: Russia's new political center...from Vladimir to Moscow
3) Third period: The reign of Ivan the Great: the "autocrat"
4) Fourth period: Viking Prince Rurik to the House of Romanov (the last Czars)
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I read it last year, but wanted a refresher course for personal reasons. As an avid follower and reader of Russian history, this book gave me an enlightened view of Russia and much of its history which I had not read about before, not in this kind of detail - that is!

Not very different than my own heritage. How - you ask?

Well in a simplified explanation, my own Hispanic (Mexican) history is often difficult to research mainly because the lack of education, thus an inability to read and to write, which clearly made it difficult for my ancestors to keep hand-written documentation of their early years. Most of the accounts are based on folk tales and hear-say. Researching our genealogy is a challenging and an arduous task for that reason alone (illiteracy) and details often murky and obscure as to what really occurred versus what may not have.
Similar issues with the Slavs, early on they had no written language with which to be able to record their own history. Most of their history was chronicled from folk tales as well that were handed down from one generation to the next. It was not until Christian missionaries arrived in the latter part of the 9th century that Russia's history was officially recorded on paper. Prior to that, we can only assume that the stories as once told long ago by the people (Slavs) then documented was less than certain. As the book states most of the data either "diluted, lost or embellished in the process".
My Mexican heritage and our early history as much uncertain same as the early years of the Slavs history being uncertain. Most of our history unable to be confirmed or refuted - good or bad - we are simply stuck with early historical accounts based on folklore and such.
Anyway, this book was a good one to read, and I do recommend it to those with interests in history (Russian or overall history). I enjoyed it although it is geared more towards education as it is entirely information-based with lots of historical facts, dates, etc... It can be a 'dry-read' for some, but if history is your forte, then this is your book.