Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman — An Obscure Princess Who Willed Herself Into History

I was three hours into a logo rebrand for a local mezcal bar — the kind of project where you're staring at the same three font pairings until your eyes cross — when Mark Deakins started describing how a fourteen-year-old German princess named Sophie arrived in Russia in the dead of winter, sick with pleurisy, and basically decided right then that she was going to own this country. And I stopped tweaking kerning. I just... stopped. Frida was asleep on my keyboard and I didn't even move her.

This book is twenty-four hours long. Twenty-four. That's three full workdays of my life. And I gave them willingly.

She Wasn't Born Catherine — She Built Her

Here's what got me: Massie doesn't start with the crown. He starts with a girl nobody wanted to be extraordinary. Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, from a family so minor they barely registered on the European nobility radar. Her mother was cold and critical (if you've ever had a parent who made you feel like you were never enough — yeah, this part hits). And then this girl learns Russian, converts to Orthodox Christianity, changes her name, and methodically transforms herself into someone who could command an empire. Not through birth. Through sheer, stubborn will.

Abuela would have loved this. She would've sat in her recliner in San Antonio, rosary in hand, gasping at the palace intrigues and whispering "¡Ay, qué mujer!" every time Catherine outmaneuvered someone twice her age. Because Catherine's story has telenovela bones — the loveless marriage to Peter III (who was genuinely bizarre, playing with toy soldiers well into adulthood while ignoring his wife), the affairs that were both strategic and deeply human, the coup that put her on the throne. But Massie treats it all with such care for the emotional reality that it never feels sensationalized.

I didn't ugly-cry at this one. I want to be honest about that. This isn't that kind of book. But I felt something slower and deeper — this sustained ache of recognition for a woman who had to be harder than she probably wanted to be, who genuinely cared about Enlightenment ideals but ruled an empire that made those ideals nearly impossible to practice. The tension between who Catherine wanted to be and who Russia required her to be — that's the emotional engine of this biography, and it never lets up across those twenty-four hours.

Mark Deakins Earned That Earphones Award

Okay so here's the thing about narrating a book this dense with Russian history: you're dealing with names like Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin and Alexei Grigoryevich Orlov and about forty other people whose names all sound similar if you're not paying attention. Deakins handles this with this brisk, confident energy that somehow makes you track who's who without needing a flowchart. He doesn't do dramatic character voices — this isn't that kind of performance — but he shifts his tone and pace in ways that tell you immediately whether you're in a diplomatic negotiation, a battlefield, or Catherine's private letters. It's subtle work. The kind of narration that doesn't show off but absolutely carries you.

His delivery is warm enough to keep you company through the political philosophy sections (and there are many) but dramatic enough for the moments that deserve drama — Catherine's actual coup, the Pugachev rebellion, her complicated grief. He reads Massie's prose like he genuinely respects it, which — given that Massie won a Pulitzer — feels right.

My one note: at 1.0x speed, twenty-four hours is a LOT. I found myself wishing Deakins would occasionally slow down even more during the emotional passages. His pace is steady and professional, but some moments deserved a breath, a pause, a little more space. This is a minor thing. I'm being picky because I care.

The Structure Thing (And Why It Didn't Bother Me)

I've seen people complain that Massie organizes sections by theme and character rather than strict chronology, and yeah — I can see how that would throw you if you're expecting a straight timeline. There are moments where you jump back in time because Massie wants to follow a particular thread — Potemkin's influence, or the evolution of Catherine's relationship with the Enlightenment philosophers. But honestly? As someone who thinks in mood boards and color stories rather than spreadsheets (okay, except the crying spreadsheet), this approach worked for me. It felt like Massie was painting a portrait, not filling in a timeline. Which is literally the subtitle.

If you need strict chronology to stay oriented, this might frustrate you. If you're okay letting the book wash over you and trusting that Massie will bring the threads together — and he does — it's gorgeous.

Who Needs This in Their Ears

This is for the person who wants to spend serious time with one extraordinary life. Not background listening. Not workout fuel. This is a rainy Sunday book stretched across many rainy Sundays — or in my case, long design sessions where I needed something rich enough to keep my brain engaged but steady enough not to distract from client work.

If you loved Massie's Peter the Great, this is its companion piece and arguably more emotionally satisfying because Catherine is a more internally complex subject. If you've never read Massie, this is a stunning place to start.

Skip if you want something fast and plot-driven. This is a slow, gorgeous immersion. You have to want to be here. That same quality of demanding your full attention while giving back something profound — Between the World and Me operates in exactly that space, though in a completely different register.

Diego Knocked My Headphones Off the Desk and I Deserved It

Twenty-four hours with Catherine, and I came out the other side feeling like I'd actually known her. Not the myth. The woman who read Voltaire and ruled through wars and loved imperfectly and outlasted everyone who underestimated her. This book felt like sitting in a candlelit room with someone who has an incredible story and all the time in the world to tell it.

My heart. Not broken — but genuinely, permanently expanded.