Catherine shoved aside her husband and seized the throne of Russia. She put down peasant revolts and palace coups, took on powerful Turkish sultans and scornful European kings. For more than three decades, she ruled with good intentions and an iron fist.

• Engaging biographies of famous and infamous figures in history
• Sophisticated design will attract high-school and middle-school struggling readers, yet on-target reading levels make these books accessible to readers of all levels
• Controlled vocabulary and sentence length make these books highly readable
• Directly correlated to Social Studies Standards for Middle and High School