I read “Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman” by Robert K. Massie in high school and loved it. It had me completely enraptured. As an adult I’ve bought several biographies and most all of them are terrible to read. Anyone have any recs for biographies that aren’t awful?
if you have some background on the french revolution already, Talleyrand by Duff Cooper otherwise most of the later Durant histories are overlapping period biographies, pretty much from The Age of Reason Begins onward, and beautiful. Catherine features in her era.