Books: Lady in Waiting

THE MEMOIRS OF CATHERINE THE GREAT (400 pp.)—Edited by Dominique Moroger, with an introduction by Dr. G. P. Gooch—Macmillan ($5).

At seven, Sophia Augusta Frederica, the penniless daughter of a petty German princeling, found "this idea of a crown . . . running in my head then like a tune, and [it] has been running . . . ever since." The music never stopped. Little Sophia of Stettin became Catherine the Great of Russia, one of the most brilliant women ever to mount a throne. Her Memoirs, published for the first time in an unexpurgated...