Rating: 
Summary: Amazing Writing for an Amazing Woman
Review: I got interested in Russian history after going to the Soviet Union when I was in 8th grade and then the Ukraine when I was in college. Then there is the fact that my husband is also of Russian descent. I picked Catherine the Great because she had such an influence and ruled for a long time. I can't wait to read Erickson's new book about another Russian royal family. It is rare for an author of a biography to write such that you think you are reading a fiction romance story, but that is just what Carolly Erickson has done. I was drawn into the story of Catherine and her thoughts and feelings from the first page. From her mother's ambition, to her own ambition, to the murder of her husband, to her many lovers. The story just flows in an awesome fashion. The only dissappointment was that the book seemed to gloss over Catherine's many acomplishments as a ruler. It did seem like the book was mosty about her early life and not enough about her rule. This book will take a while to get throught, it is not an easy read, but is well worth it to understand the history of a people who are such a mystery to most American people.
Rating: 
Summary: This book reads like a drawn out soap-opera.
Review: I had the opportunity to read this book while I was studying
in Russia. Instead of it being awe inspiring, I found Ms.
Erickson's comments on how Catherine the Great, like how she
suffered during her wedding cermony because of her constrictive dress, to be boring and unecessary. Ms. Erickson added extranneous information that kept making me say, "get on
with the plot." She then teased with sumptous banter about
Catherine's sex life only to end up using vague references
instead of meaty tidbits. I would have like to have gotten my hands on a copy before it went to press so I could have
asked, "do you really think this part is necessary?"
Rating: 
Summary: I'VE READ BETTER, BUT.......
Review: I must admit to have read better biographies. That being said, I must admit to have enjoyed this one, warts and all. I got the feeling that Ms. Erickson had some sort of agenda throughout the book, but for the life of me, dull witted me, I missed it. I am not at all sure that the sexual romps described here are all that important to Russian History, per se, but hey, they did make interesting reading...sort of. I did give this one four stars as Ms. Erickson is certainly a gifted writer and was able to pull off at least 80 percent of the book. I do not feel that after reading it, one should try passing themselves off as an expert on Russian history, or even poor Catherine, for that matter.
Rating:
Summary: It's all about Catherine!
Review: I read Great Catherine as an informal preparation for a class on Russian history. Having finished it, I can't recommend it for anyone interested in her era.
The book does have some strengths. Erickson writes well. She has an abundance of empathy with her subject (which is a strength in a biography but only up to a point). The book does give you a basic timeline of Catherine's life, and may be useful in that regard.
However, the focus of Great Catherine is quite unsatisfactory. The book's central project seems to be redeeming Catherine's reputation from those who claim she was a depraved nymphomaniac. While we've all heard the story involving the horse, I don't think that this is an issue that really has broad historical meaning.
Nonetheless, Great Catherine mires itself in a tiresome recollection of each of Catherine's affairs. Erickson's sympathy for Catherine overrides any inclination she might have had to ask serious and critical questions about how this aspect of Catherine's life may have affected her rule. Whatever she did in the bedchamber, Catherine chose to act in a way that gathered attention and started rumors, making herself the object of ridicule and scorn. The alibi that she was seeking love only holds for her first few flings. The pattern that Erickson sketches is that of someone in the grips of pathological behavior.
Tellingly, Erickson seems to embrace Catherine's explanations for each breakup - which invariably fault the male partner and not the love-starved monarch. Whether or not she was a nymphomaniac, Catherine's behavior was self-destructive. A more inquisitive biography would steer past melodramatic commentary about the monarch's poor impoverished heart and ask how the monarch's personal life impacted her statecraft.
This is a book that is overly obsessed with appearances. Catherine's radiant appearance and demeanor is discussed incessantly. After a while, I was willing to take it on faith that, yes, she was very charming and also happened to look good. Erickson seemingly cannot mention people without mentioning their physical features. The reader is repeatedly reminded how ugly Peter III's mistress was. A similar level of detail is lavished on pageantry, with one dinner or ball only more stunning than its predecessor. Again, the reader - starved of more substantive details - is willing to accept that, yes, the Russian court liked luxurious living.
Very little of the book is devoted to discussions of Catherine's rule as empress and none of that is at all analytical or insightful. As elsewhere, Erickson offers a basic defense of her protagonist. Major acts of policy are not dealt with in detail. Catherine's role in the destruction of the Polish state is covered in a few paragraphs that blandly note that this was commonly approved of at the time. Her policies toward the conquered Poles are not discussed. Nor is the contradiction between her earlier course of seating her favorite on the Polish throne and her later course of outright annexation discussed.
Similarly, the book fails to examine her two wars with the Ottomans in satisfying detail. What glimpses we do get of the wartime Catherine make her seem quite jingoistic and aggressive. How does this reconcile with the tender-hearted reader of philosophy portrayed elsewhere in the book? Moreover, the book never asks hard questions about her war policies - which are particularly important because the second war with the Ottomans dragged on far longer than Catherine would have liked, being complicated by a simultaneous war with Sweden. We do get the detail that bad news from the front impelled Catherine to retreat and read Plutarch in solitude. What a committed, capable monarch!
Another biographer might have at least dealt with Catherine's pivotal decision to confine Jews to the Pale of Settlement - a critical act of policy that set the stage for the pogroms of the following century. Her policy toward minorities is never discussed.
The book's overall examination of Catherine's policies is quite laudatory. This is odd, because it seemed that her efforts to reform the state were constantly frustrated by the nobles and by peasant rebellions. Why nobles and peasants opposed her so much is a question left unanswered. Where Catherine fails, Erickson attributes the failure to all other parties; never to the ambitious empress. If something went wrong, it could only have been the fault of backward peasantry or corrupt nobles. The long term impact of her policies is unexamined.
In sum, I think this is an unsatisfactory biography. It focuses on Catherine's personality at the expense of understanding her actions. At its heart is an unproductive infatuation with its subject that leads the author to skirt around serious questions in favor of endless and repetitive description. I am left convinced that Catherine was indeed a bright, cheery, intelligent woman, but it is left to other authors to determine her real historical significance. Catherine may have been great, but this biography certainly is not.
Rating:
Summary: Footnotes? Bibliography?
Review: I was disappointed by Carolly Erickson's biography of Catherine II of Russia. Erickson's excellent biography of Mary Tudor, "Bloody Mary," led me to expect an equivalent level of research and writing for this opus. But Erickson has not duplicated her earlier success. We are given few precise citations for any incidents, and the sources mentioned at the end are insultingly lean. Erickson has relied heavily on Catherine's own self-serving memoirs, and the resulting lack of objectivity has resulted in a book that should be filed under the category of 'historical fiction.' Why does this bother me? Erickson's lax approach to footnotes and references is, to me, symptomatic of a growing trend toward carelessly researched and badly written history and biography. (For example: Ronald Reagan's official biographer wrote himself into the text of "Dutch," and invented non-existent characters.) The Internet is rife with under-researched and inaccurate info-babble, and one often hears the complaint that modern readers are drowning in an ocean of untrustworthy data. I think that if our technologically-based information age is to thrive, then we must demand a high standard of scholarship from our authors. History can be both accurately documented and interesting --- one *can* truly instruct *and* delight, as Sir Philip Sidney suggested. (See Antonia Fraser's moving and well-researched biography, "Marie Antoinette: The Journey," for a prime example of a well-written, popular historical biography.) So, Ms. Erickson, if you want to write historical fiction --- as is the case with "Great Catherine" --- please require your editor to promote your literature in that category. Don't sell your mushy prose under the moniker of 'history' or 'biography.'
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely not an inspired or engrossing biography!
Review: I was so excited when I first got this book. I was anxious to learn about Catherine the Great and the multicolored details of her eccentric life. I was unbelievably disappointed in the one-dimensional quality of the text. The author turns Catherine the Great into Catherine the Simpleton! There can be no historical basis for much of the commentary that Ms. Erickson makes. This is not a biography of an interesting woman but a medium for the author to preach from her left-wing lecturn. In my opinion, this biography rates as one of the sleaziest, most unimaginative, and biased books ever written on the life of a historical personality.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Catherine, Empress of Russia
Review: This book was part of my required reading for a European History class. I found the story interesting and informative, but it focused mainly on her personal life, and not her politics, which does not help in furthering my knowlegde of Russian history. I know more than i need to, though, about the private lives and habits of the courtiers in her day, and her constant need to have a lover. The story of Catherine's life in court, her rise to power, and her time as empress do seem drawn out into a soap opera like tale, which doesn't help teach me of Russia's po.litical history. The book was intriguing, but should not be used as an educational tool.
Rating:
Summary: Great Catherine, Empress of Russia
Review: This book was part of my required reading for a European History class. I found the story interesting and informative, but it focused mainly on her personal life, and not her politics, which does not help in furthering my knowlegde of Russian history. I know more than i need to, though, about the private lives and habits of the courtiers in her day, and her constant need to have a lover. The story of Catherine's life in court, her rise to power, and her time as empress do seem drawn out into a soap opera like tale, which doesn't help teach me of Russia's po.litical history. The book was intriguing, but should not be used as an educational tool.
Rating:
Summary: Boring and Tedious
Review: This is my first and last Carolly Erickson book. She should take a lesson from Alison Weir on how to create a vivid 3-dimensional description of a historical person. After I put this book down i thought "Catherine the Great was so dull" but then I realized that, no, it was just this book!
|
