Alexei and the Mad Monk Rasputin - Firestone, Greer

The world has long been fascinated with the compelling characters and cataclysmic events surrounding the end of the 300-year Romanov dynasty of Russia: ¿The mystical (and some say mythical) Grigori Rasputin and his influence on the teenaged Alexei, the heir ¿The four lovely Romanov daughters (OTMA): Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia) ¿World War I and the Communist Revolution of 1917 Few books have touched on what was the greatest secret of the age: Tsarevich Alexei's curse of hemophilia, "The Royal Disease." Entwined in this tale of incalculable wealth and global dominance is the enigmatic and magnetic Gregori Rasputin - peasant and holy man. Medical doctors could not help Alexei. Only Rasputin had the power to stop the flow of blood through his brittle veins. Was he saint or sinner? Alexei and the Mad Monk Rasputin gives a face, a personality, and a soul . . . to the boy who carried on his small frame two impossible burdens - heir and hemophiliac. Taken from first person historical accounts, this is a novel about the boy whose murder changed the course of history.