Douglas Smith is an award-winning historian and translator and the author of four books on Russia. His latest book, "Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy," was published in 2012. It was named a best book of the year by the Kansas City Star and Salon and won the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize. "Former People" is being published in ten foreign languages.Over the past thirty years Douglas Smith has made many trips to Russia. In the 1980s, he was a Russian-speaking guide on the U. S. State Department's exhibition "Information USA" that traveled throughout the USSR. He has worked as a Soviet affairs analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich, Germany specializing in Russian nationalism and served as an interpreter for late President Reagan.Smith has taught and lectured widely in the United States, Britain, and Europe and has appeared in documentaries for A&E, National Geographic, and the BBC. He lives in Seattle. His new book, "Rasputin: The Biography," will be published in 2016.