Author Description

In July 1991, nine skeletons were exhumed from a shallow mass grave near Ekaterinburg, Siberia, a few miles from the infamous cellar room where the last tsar and his family had been murdered seventy-three years before. But were these the bones of the Romanovs? And if these were their remains - revealed finally after over seven decades - where were the bones of the two younger Romanovs supposedly murdered with the rest of the family? The Romanovs: The Final Chapter provides the answers, recounting the horrifying moments of slaughter, revealing the guilt of and the cover-up by Lenin and his lieutenants, and then describing in dramatic, suspenseful detail the fascinating and ultimately successful efforts in post-Communist Russia to discover the truth. This unique story, written almost as a detective thriller by Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie, presents a colorful panorama of contemporary characters - beginning with two enterprising Russians who, against tremendous odds, finally found the secret burial place; documenting the key roles of U.S. secretary of state James Baker, Russian president Boris Yeltsin, and Great Britain's Prince Philip; and reporting the major scientific dispute between Russian experts and a team of Americans, including Drs. William Maples and Michael Baden - fiercely antagonistic forensic experts whose findings, along with those of DNA scientists from Russia, America, and Great Britain, all contributed to, and then resolved, the controversy.