Shahnameh
977 · 1040 pages
Fifty thousand couplets carry Iran from creation to the Arab conquest, past a tyrant with snakes growing from his shoulders and the hero Rostam meeting a young champion he does not recognize.
★ 7.1
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Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Catherine the Great
Portrait of a Woman
2011 · 672 pages
A minor German princess arrives in Russia at fourteen, deposes her husband eighteen years later, and rules for thirty-four. Massie writes her from the inside, drawing on her own candid memoirs.
★ 5.5