Whipped Cream Difficulties

Robert K. Massie, author, historian, and Pulitzer Prize winner.

Mr. Massie said his literary odyssey was set in motion by research he did at the New York Public Library during lunch breaks from his job as a young journalist. It was purely personal research at first: He wanted to know more about the bleeding disease of hemophilia and how he and his wife at the time, Suzanne Massie, who became a noted Russian scholar, could help their hemophiliac son, Bob.
During his research he became fascinated with perhaps the most famous childhood case of hemophilia, that of Alexei, a son of Nicholas and Alexandra. It was to help Alexei that Alexandra had summoned Grigory Rasputin, the notorious faith-healing monk who gained influence over the imperial court. Public disdain of Rasputin contributed to the Russian people’s turn against the monarchy, helping to pave the way for the revolution of 1917.
Mr. Massie wound up writing an article on hemophilia for The Saturday Evening Post, where he had taken a job in 1962. He wrote an accompanying article about Alexei and his parents, but The Post did not print it. Still, he found himself unable to abandon the family drama of the Romanovs, as the Russian dynasty was known, and he eventually quit his job to pursue the subject full time.
A decade later, “Nicholas and Alexandra” was published to acclaim. Though nearly 1,000 pages long, it sold more than 4.5 million copies and is regarded as one of the most popular historical studies ever published.

When I was a little kid, we had a Reader’s Digest Condensed book that had Nicholas and Alexandra in it. I remember being both fascinated by it and incapable of understanding it, because I was a little kid, and Russian history was just a little above my level. Not too long ago (back when I was at St. Ed’s) I read – and loved – the actual, non-condensed book.

Lawrence tipped me off to this, but I don’t have an obit to link: Dorothy Catherine Fontana, aka D.C. Fontana. She did a lot of writing for television, including “The Waltons”, “Land of the Lost”, something called “Captain Simian & The Space Monkeys”, “Babylon 5”, “Dallas”, “Logan’s Run”, “Lancer”…

…and she was also heavily involved with a minor series called “Star Trek”, as well as some of the sequels: “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, “Star Trek: The Animated Series”, and various spin-off products.

Edited to add: THR obit. (Hattip: RoadRich.)

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