Rasputin: The Saint Who Sinned

British journalist and historian Brian Moynahan does not spare details of the lechery and drunkenness that Rasputin brought with him on his journey from the squalor of rural Siberia to St. Petersburg, where he captivated the tsar and tsarina with his mysterious ability to ease their hemophiliac son's hemorrhages. Yet Moynahan also credits "the mad monk" with intelligence, generosity, even a weird spirituality. In elegant prose, he retells with panache the saga of an illiterate peasant's rise to a position of fearsome power in the waning days of the Russian monarchy.