Catherine: The Portrait of an Empress

THERE have been better women than Catherine of Russia, nobler and more learned women, but history discloses no woman who combined so much of good and evil into one bewildering and gloriously successful career. Daughter of a petty German Prince, chance made her the wife of the heir to the Russian Empire. She took that nation to her heart, discarded her weakling husband, and ruled her adopted country for more than three decades with a strength and understanding it had seldom known before.
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