TSAR: THE LOST WORLD OF NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA

TSAR: THE LOST WORLD OF NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA Peter Kurth; photographs by Peter Christopher (Little, Brown, $60) The story of the Romanovs is endlessly fascinating to academics and armchair historians alike, perhaps because it reads like a fairy tale come to life, complete with all the melodramatic trappings: power, passion, politics, and tragedy, played out in a faraway land. Given such visual grandeur, few historical subjects lend themselves to illustrations as elegantly as the days just before the Russian revolution, and Tsar's photographs, many previously unpublished, establish both the richness of an era when Faberga was a household name and the complete devastation that followed. The only quibble with Tsar is that it's a page-turner packaged as a coffee-table book: too big to curl up with, too interesting -- and often disturbing -- to merely flip through. That said, make room on your lap however you can. A