Historian Robert K. Massie, best known for his expansive yet tautly narrated biographies of the Romanov family, died December 2. After a stint in the U.S. Navy and a brief career as a journalist, Massie wrote Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (1967). He was inspired to write it after his own son was diagnosed with hemophilia, the same condition that afflicted Tsarevich Alexei. The 1,000-page book has since sold more than 4.5 million copies. In 1971, it was adapted into a film starring Laurence Olivier. Massie won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for Peter the Great: His Life and World, which became a miniseries in 1986. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of its archives, Massie updated Nicholas and Alexandra with The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (1995).Massie also wrote Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (1991); Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea (2004); and Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (2011). Catherine the Great won the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. It is available from Random House ($22, 9780345408778). --Tobias Mutter