A real book!

Well, it took over three weeks, but I actually finished a (gasp) real, meaty, hardcore historical biography!  Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie was very interesting, all 672 pages of it (hence how long it took... most days I only read 15-20 minutes a night before bed).  Massie has a knack for recreating people's innermost thoughts and feelings from journal entries, letters, and writings.

I learned so much about Catherine, the history of Russia and Europe in the 18th century, the assumptions of royalty, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the prevalence of love affairs among the nobility, the attitude toward children... I could go on.  It was quite a read, and it's inspired me to do much extra research on that time period.  I'm pretty good at ancient history, but the 18th century has always been a bit of a blur, especially how all the countries related to each other.  Like, did you know that Great Britain appealed to Russia asking for tens of thousands of Russian soldiers to help put down that pesky Revolution in their overseas colonies?  Or that Catherine the Great was in close contact with Voltaire, and wanted to abolish serfdom in her land based on his writings?  Or that she, Frederick II of Prussia, and Maria Theresa of Austria were all related by marriage?  No matter that everyone was an-law to each other, alliances kept changing at the drop of a hat.

Fascinating stuff... thank you, Jonathan, for the Hanukkah present!  I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it.  As for anyone else, if history is your cup of tea, I highly recommend it.  I'm going to search out some of Massie's other books; apparently his Peter the Great won a Pulitzer Prize.