Peter I, was Tsar of all Russia from 1682, and the first Emperor of all Russia, known as Peter the Great, from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V until 1696. From this year, Peter was an absolute monarch, an autocrat who remained the ultimate authority and organized a well-ordered police state.
The Pulitzer Prize for Criticism has been presented since 1970 to a newspaper writer in the United States who has demonstrated 'distinguished criticism'. Recipients of the award are chosen by an independent board and officially administered by Columbia University. The Pulitzer Committee issues an official citation explaining the reasons for the award.
John Tracy Kidder is an American writer of nonfiction books. He received the Pulitzer Prize for his The Soul of a New Machine (1981), about the creation of a new computer at Data General Corporation. He has received praise and awards for other works, including his biography of Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist, titled Mountains Beyond Mountains (2003).
James Arlington Wright was an American poet.
Cornelius Mahoney Sheehan was an American journalist. As a reporter for The New York Times in 1971, Sheehan obtained the classified Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. His series of articles revealed a secret United States Department of Defense history of the Vietnam War and led to a U.S. Supreme Court case, New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), which invalidated the United States government's use of a restraining order to halt publication.
Zakhar Grigoryevich Chernyshev was a Russian noble, courtier to Catherine the Great, Imperial Russian Army officer, and Imperial Russian politician in the 18th century.
James Marcus Schuyler was an American poet. His awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1980 collection The Morning of the Poem. He was a central figure in the New York School and is often associated with fellow New York School poets John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, and Barbara Guest.
Arthur Edmund Morris was an American-South African writer, known for his biographies of U.S. Presidents. His 1979 book The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and was the first of a trilogy of books on Roosevelt. However, Morris sparked controversy with his 1999 book, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, due to its extensive use of fictional elements.
Charles Kenneth "C. K." Williams was an American poet, critic and translator. Williams won many poetry awards. Flesh and Blood won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair (1999) won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The Singing won the 2003 National Book Award and Williams received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2005. The 2012 film The Color of Time relates aspects of Williams' life using his poetry.
Ronald Chernow is an American writer, journalist, and biographer. He has written bestselling historical non-fiction biographies.
Robert Kinloch Massie III was an American journalist and historian. He devoted much of his career to studying and writing about the House of Romanov, Russia's imperial family from 1613 to 1917. Massie was awarded the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for Peter the Great: His Life and World. He also received awards for his book Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (2011).
The Pulitzer Prizes for 1981 were announced on April 13, 1981.
David Ebershoff is an American writer, editor, and teacher. His debut novel, The Danish Girl, was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film of the same name in 2015, while his third novel, The 19th Wife, was adapted into a television movie of the same name in 2010.
Anthony Bruce Summers is an Irish author. He is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and has written ten non-fiction books. He worked for the BBC in current affairs coverage as a producer and then as an assistant editor of the long-running investigative documentary series Panorama. His first book was published in 1976.
Robert Kinloch "Bob" Massie IV is an American activist, author, clergyman and early pioneer in the fields of corporate accountability, finance, sustainability, and climate change. He has created or led several organizations, including Ceres, the Global Reporting Initiative, the Investor Network on Climate Risk, the New Economy Coalition and the Sustainable Solutions Lab. His early activism centered on opposition to South Africa's apartheid regime, writing about the relationship between the U.S. and South Africa in the apartheid era.
Jonathan Yardley is an American author and former book critic at The Washington Post from 1981 to December 2014, and held the same post from 1978 to 1981 at the Washington Star. In 1981, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
David Nasaw is an American author, biographer and historian who specializes in the cultural, social and business history of early 20th Century America. Nasaw is on the faculty of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he is the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Professor of History.
Count Nikita Moiseevich Zotov was a childhood tutor and lifelong friend of Russian Tsar Peter the Great. Historians disagree on the quality of Zotov's tutoring. Robert K. Massie, for example, praises his efforts, but Lindsey Hughes criticizes the education that he gave to the future tsar.
The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters (1692–1725) was a club founded by Peter I of Russia. The group included many of Peter's closest friends, and its activities centered mostly around drinking and reveling. The group was not without controversies; some of its parodies against the Russian Orthodox Church in particular were heavily criticized.
T. J. Stiles is an American biographer who lives in Berkeley, California. His book The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt won a National Book Award and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. His book Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America received the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History.
