NEW YORK (AP) — Robert K. Massie, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of Russian tsars, has died.
Son Christopher Massie told The Associated Press that the author died Monday at his home in Irvington, New York. He was 90 and had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Likened to David McCullough and Edmund Morris as a popularizer of history, Massie wrote the best-selling “Nicholas and Alexandra,” adapted into an Oscar-winning film of the same name. He also wrote the 900-page “Peter the Great,” winner of the Pulitzer in 1981 and the 600-page “Catherine the Great,” which won a PEN award for biography in 2012.
His other works included “The Romanovs,” which tackled the mystery of the royal family’s remains after they were murdered, and a pair of books about Britain and Germany in the early 20th century.