2 comments about Disraeli: A Biography.

1. Dr. Stanley Weintraub's biography of Ben Disraeli is excellent. The scholarship is at the top. The only other biography that I would consider but I have some reservations is the one by Lord Blake the problem with his as compared to Dr. Weintraub's is it is too thick. This one spends plenty of time on his political and publishing career. I thoughly enjoy the biography, and for all those who harken back to a time when are politicans had some flare and style will enjoy this book.



2. I found this book to be a solid, scholarly biography of Benjamin Disraeli. The subject is thoroughly researched and presented in great detail. One will certainly come away with great insight into the Prime Minister who Queen Victoria so adored.
   But Weintraub's book is so detailed and his prose can be so very dry in places, that one finds oneself sometimes plodding along.
   I found Christopher Hibbert's biography (Disraeli: The Victorian Dandy Who Became Prime Minister) to be superior. Hibbert's prose is more lively, and one comes away feeling that they have gotten to know "Dizzy" far more intimately.
   Having said that, however, Weintraub's Disraeli is certainly well worth the effort.

3 comments about Churchill and War.

1. A book for all those interested in the martial side of the great British statesman. Especially interesting to me were thoughts on WW II air raids on Dresden and the overalll tactics and morality of Bomber Command. Also, many will find Professor Best's discussion of Winston Churchill's involvement with the development of the atomic bomb and his early 1950s statements on maintaining international peace, given this new war device, especially informative.
   
   British historian Geoffrey Best writes from deep knowledge, and in a pleasing style. Readers interested in a broader treatment of Sir Winston's life would profit from reading his 2001 biography, "Churchill: a Study in Greatness."



2. This is a brillant book; well researched, extremely well written and a great read!
   
   Author Geoffrey Best shows the important role war played in the life of Winston Churchill, beginning with his birth at Blenheim (built for John Churchill, first Duke of Malborough and commemorating the 1704 battle, which secured England's rising position in the world) and focusing mainly on the British leader's seminal role in the Second World War. "War was central to Churchill's life," writes Best, "He was a soldier before he was a politician."
   
   Best addresses various aspects of Churchill as a war leader, including his influence on the Grand Alliance and the strategic insight and war direction he provided to Great Britian and the Allies. While he helped to determine the outcome of the war by ensuring America's participation, Churchill's strategic vision was, at times, faulty. Certainly his resistence to Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy and the European Continent, in favor of a greater Allied commitment in Italy and the Balkans, shows him at his strategic worse.
   
   Following the Second World War, however, the British leader became less conservative and more flexible and worked fervently to avert another world war. The use of atomic weapons in another war became anathema to him. "The fact was that Churchill had lost his taste for war," records Best. "He had studied was for sixty years and lived it for fifteen of then and it had been getting worse all the time. He had never cherised illusions about it."
   
   This book dispels a great many myths about Winston Churchill and his attitudes toward war. Informative and insightful, it will alter our perceptions of a great statesman, whose life, from beginning to end, was filled with war.



3. Geoffrey Best masterfully highlights the role that war played in Winston Churchill's long life while putting to rest some myths and misconceptions on this subject. As Best puts it diplomatically at the beginning, Churchill was not a saint. Churchill was at times rough and at others smooth. Churchill's roughness was embodied in his egotism, ruthlessness, and lack of consideration. Churchill's smoothness was found in his decency, patriotism, humanity, and courage. The secret behind Churchill's greatness lied in breaking rules.
   
   Churchill was a man in a hurry, on the lookout for both fame and notice. Churchill was always wondering how he looked like if he did this or that. Churchill was looking for his "finest hours" for decades. Churchill repeatedly showed recklessness on the battlefield while believing that nothing serious could ever happen to him during his military adventures.
   
   Churchill's books, articles, and speeches were at the service of his military and political ambitions while making a living out of them. Churchill valued most his writings about war. War was the most exciting activity to man in Churchill's view. History taught him that war was ruling the destinies of nations.
   
   Churchill was never one to be idle. Churchill's great transformation began when he took to serious company and books. Churchill did not find any relish in club-lounging, party-going, dancing, and womanizing. Although Churchill was not indifferent to female charm, he was not at ease with women. Churchill was lucky to find in Clementine Hozier a gifted woman who could accommodate his sometimes difficult character.
   
   Churchill was a very hard working man and showed an unusual talent for mastering detail. Churchill had an elephantine memory on which he could rely to use facts and data for further purposes. Although Churchill had an unusual gift with words, he was not by nature an effective public speaker.
   
   Churchill had a deep interest in military strategy within which the large allied armies operated during the two world wars. Strategizing was to him the closest thing to commanding great armies in the field. Churchill's interest in generalship was at the very heart of his fascination with war, including the technologies used for waging war. Like other war leaders, Churchill found the neutrality of non-belligerents irksome.
   
   Churchill remained a democrat at times of war by not suppressing critics who annoyed him. Despite his excitement about war, Churchill considered magnanimous peacemaking important once war was over. However, Churchill had no intention to condone the atrocities committed by the Nazis against non-combatants during WWII.
   
   The older Churchill was, the more he became aware of the heavy price tag attached to war for those who did not have his luck. For all his humanity, Churchill knew very well that war was a dreadfully demanding endeavor that overturned peacetime norms and hardened man's heart. Churchill had no illusion about the increasingly lethal evolution of war during his lifetime. Unsurprisingly, Churchill promoted a peace agenda after WWII with the advent of the balance of nuclear terror.
   
   To summarize, Best helps his audience better comprehend what role war played in the existence of a man who left an indelible footprint behind him.

No comments about The Story of the Malakand Field force.

5 comments about We Shall Not Fail: The Inspiring Leadership of Winston Churchill.

1. Anyone who gave less than 4 stars for this book needs to have their head examined! This is a great book about a great man. I read a lot, but when I read that this man read entire volumes, I was impressed. The fact that England isn't speaking German today is largely due to the perseverence of Churchill. As far as good writing, Celia Sandys (Churchills grand-daughter) did a wonderful job. Any leader would learn a lot by reading this or other books about or by Churchill.
   
   I liked it and highly recommend it.



2. I am a Churchill fan and have read much by many on the subject. This book might serve as a primer on Churchill. It captures some of his distinguishing characteristics. While some of them relate to leadership, others were just extensions of his personality. He was a bullish, long winded, contrarian, egoist. Without a doubt he was also an extraordinary leader and a man for his time during WWII.
   
   Unfortunately, in some chapters Celia Sandys takes a personality style or quirk and tries to stretch it into an inspiring nugget of leadership truth for the masses. She gives anecodtal evidence of a particular facet of Churchill's outlook and then ends each chapter with Churchillian Principles. They are meant to convey that he had distilled these principles and lived by them, however, there are many biographies out there that will show you the complete Churchill. He was a leader. He was stubborn, relentless and fully taken with himself. But let's don't over do it. These were manifestations of WHO Churchill was, not leadership principles. Churchill wouldn't have changed any of them even if he discovered they weren't exceptional leadership traits. He simply would have continued on undeterred.
   
   Still, I would recommend this book to any not familiar with Churchill and who may not be up for a lengthy biography. You'll get enough for a flavor of the man or you may be intrigued enough to conduct more serious study about him. I don't think you will be able to take any one of the "Churchillian principles" and infuse it into your personal management or leadership style.



3. First a caveat to my review. I only bought this book for information on Winston Churchill, and have no interest on the business aspect of this book at all. I got exactly what I wanted, insight on Churchill the man, and even learned a bit about some great business minds. The book is full of little vignettes of Churchill, and how he operated and used his personal skills. Divided into chapters which define Churchill at his best, and even some of his worst. The gems of the book are the little stories given to reinforce thought processes of the authors on Churchill. Such as the one where Churchill, after a late night meeting, ran into a trunk G.I in a hallway. The G.I addressed Churchill as "Fatso", and asked him where the bathroom was. Churchill gave the man concise instruction on finding the restroom, then added "It is marked Gentlemen...., but do not let that discourage you." Priceless, stuff on a great man. If I were more intersted on the business side of the book a five would have been given.



4. Found the book in my case that had kind of sit there for some time. Was a book short without the library being open so why not? It was a great decision. Having always thought alot of Churchill this book was excellent to expose his deep thinking and ways with people. Any executive could learn a multitude of actions from this book. Todays world does not follow most of these ways and it probably is the reason we are in the mess we are currently in. We need more men as great a Churchill. Are you out there?



5. There is no question that Winston Churchill was an inspiring and powerful leader, probably the best that the twentieth century produced. He took over a nation reeling from defeat and standing literally alone against the mightiest military power ever assembled before the massive American forces were mustered at the end of World War II. When many were convinced that England would be forced to surrender, he rallied the British so that they held on until the Soviet Union and the United States entered the conflict.
   This book is a recapitulation of many of the actions and principles used by Churchill to achieve his war aims and at that level, the book is a success. Beyond that, there is an attempt to relate these actions to managing a modern business. While there is some justification to the comparisons, the book is very weak in that area.
   The problem of course is that the British position in the first years of World War II was a literal matter of life and death. If they failed, the nation could cease to exist and even in the best case scenario of victory, thousands of British citizens would be brutally killed. This simply cannot be transferred into the leadership of a business. The capitalist system has programmed a rate of business failures into the regular operations, so the failure of a business is at most a local catastrophe. Therefore, all such comparisons suffer from a serious, if not fatal flaw.
   The authors use the incident of the destruction of the World Trade center towers as the most similar modern incident and there is repeated praise of the American and British leaders after the fact. While some of that praise is justified, the reality is that despite the horrific nature of the event, it was a singular event, unlike the Blitz, which was nightly.
   For these reasons, I rank the book highly in the historical sense, although there is a glossing over of some of Churchill's mistakes. This is balanced by a poor rank in the modern business sense, because the situations are just not that comparable.

No comments about David & Winston: How a Friendship Changed History.

1 comments about Becoming Winston Churchill: The Untold Story of Young Winston and his American Mentor.

1. for people really interested in the only mentor churchill ever had this book is a must have

5 comments about The Downing Street Years.

1. Athena was the ancient Greek Goddess of war, wisdom, and strategy and is a common Jungian archetype. Lady Thatcher was a living breathing embodiment of Athena and well deserved her iron lady nickname. Britain must be doing something right because they had Churchill and Thatcher as Prime Ministers in the same century just three decades apart. Churchill was the bulldog who refused to say uncle to Germany. Thatcher was a conviction politician (an even rarer breed in 2005) ... who gave the defiance to communism. The Downing Street Years are her personal testamony of her courage to bring Britain out of near bankruptcy, her strength to crush the socialist unions, and the stealth to hold to her vision. In a world where too many leaders spend 90 percent of their time worrying what other people think, Thatcher had a steely spine and never bent to win some fluffy popularity contest. The prequel "The Path to Power" is an equally fascinating personal memoir of a life designed out of unbelievable confidence.
   
   Thatcher entered Oxford at 17 on full scholarship despite opposition from her Headmaster. Teenage Maggie challenged the latin exam, crammed three years of study into four months, and aced her scholarship to read analytical chemistry at university. If you want your daughter to manifest her leadership, dsetiny, and persevere according to an inner compass, Margaret Thatcher is one of those mentors whose actions truly are larger than her words.
   
   Having had the privilege to hear Lady Thatcher speak in person during Unviersity, her ability to move the room, only sharpened after her exited 10 Downing Street for the final time. Ronald Reagan and Thatcher's warm friendship sealed the melting of the iron curtain. It took iron to melt iron. Lady Thatcher is one special leadership, intellectually powerful and able to translate and apply her brilliance for enduring political currency. Her legacy is unlike any other female leader in today's climate. Only Senator Clinton might share a similar legacy whilst not quite sharing Thatcher's policies. If Thatcher was two decades younger I would lobby her to cross the pond and take over the leadership of this (Canada) other Commonwealth country. After four decades of socialism ... we need it!



2. I can't help but like Margaret Thatcher, even though much of what she stood for abrades my own values and sense of what is right and wrong. If for nothing else than her iron-hard, Churchillian stance against the IRA in the 1980's---thus in the face of no British pullout from Northern Ireland sparing the Republic in the south from dealing with the fighting in Ulster---she rates all right in my eyes. She rose to power in her own party in a time when even in matriarchal Great Britain women were not supposed to be able to make it to the top. She also orchestrated the defeat of the entrenched if unpopular Labour Party in the 1970's by taking the minds and souls of her countrymen back to more glorious times of Empire. If there is any doubt that so many parallels can be drawn between her and her contemporary US counterpart Ronald Reagan, then consider how expertly she used one-liners and power slogans in her own campaigns and political battles. ("Labour Is Not Working" a popular banner of the late-70's is probably the best and most clever tool her party employed.)
   
   In this memoir of the Downing Street years, Thatcher does only one thing wrong in my view and that's how she drifts too often into self-congratulation. I mean, that's the only way I can say it. Instead of sticking to facts and letting society and history be her jury, she appears perfectly content to do it herself. If "humility is truth" maybe in a way her take on herself is a virtue, I don't know, but to me, it came off as a slight faux pas.
   
   The Prime Minister a reader meets in these topic-by-topic discussions of events germane to her lengthy time in office (she outlasted two US Presidents and nearly a third) is a capable, tough, self-confident personage who was probably the best and most fitting person to lead her nation at that moment.



3. 
   "The Downing Street Years" is an interesting, informative, enlightening and fascinating account of Margaret Thatcher as the Prime Minister of Great Britain for 11 years. Lady Thatcher was clearly a brilliant politician with a sharp intellect who has left an enduring legacy and indelible mark in British and world politics. Readers can get an insight on how she made certain decisions.
   
   My political views are very different from hers but I greatly admire her achievements for Britain. She had the courage, perseverance and decisiveness to stand up for her beliefs and not just to please some people. Her rise to power in a male dominated society and Conservative Party is nothing short of remarkable. Things to her were in clear black or white, no grey areas, which generated either intense loyalty or deep seated dislike of the lady. She was truly an "Iron Lady".
   
   In her memoirs, the reader will learn how she dealt with various significant events during her tenure in office such as the Falklands War, the USSR, the Miners Strike, and the privatization of nationalized industries, her encounters and opinions on various world leaders as well as how she won three elections (1979, 1983 and 1987). Her close friendship with Ronald Reagan played a significant role in the collapse of the USSR. She also reveals the challenges she often encountered in politics including betrayals and dealing with government officials steeped in bureaucracy.
   
   This is excellent reading for executives and politicians of all political persuasions.



4. Hillary Clinton has mentioned that she went blond after reading Thatcher's autobiography.
   Why did Thatcher go blond?
   
   Thatcher's books don't list blond, bleach or hair in the index.
   I wish more books were in digital form.
   thanks.



5. Mrs. Thatcher's memoirs of her decade-plus as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom are a very illuminating look at the 1980s, which were perhaps the most critical decade for Britain - and the rest of the Western world - since the Second World War. This is a massive, 800-plus page tome. But if you're interested in recent British history, or in the 1980s or the late Cold War, this book will reward your time and effort. Mrs. Thatcher may have been controversial - loved by many and hated by nearly as many - but one thing you can't accuse her of is failure to lead.
   
   All of the important events of her tenure as PM are covered. Some of it is tedious - such as minute details about tax policies, for example. (Though these do, however, illustrate Mrs. Thatcher's impressive ability to understand the complexities of important issues.) But the wonderful thing about this book is that it's organized simultaneously chronologically and topically, which means you can skip over parts you're not interested in and go ahead to something else. (I admit I did this more than once.)
   
   I particularly liked the parts dealing with the Falkland Islands War and those dealing with the Cold War. In the case of the former, I've read several military accounts of the conflict, but Mrs. Thatcher's detailed chronicling of the diplomatic aspects added greatly to my understanding of it. It was amazing how much the US, in the form of Secretary of State Al Haig, meddled in it to try to achieve "compromise," despite the fact that Argentina was clearly the aggressor.
   
   The parts on the last phases of the Cold War were the strongest parts of the book. It's neat to get an insider's account of all the personalities and the diplomatic wrangling. Mrs. Thatcher was the Churchill of her time - she was instrumental in using real leadership skills to help hold together an alliance against aggressive dictatorships. The combination of her leadership with that of Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Mikhail Gorbachev - the first Soviet leader who seemed to genuinely have good intentions, despite his continuing belief in communism - was a major factor in bringing about the end of the Cold War. I believe that as time goes by, Mrs. Thatcher will only be more vindicated, both for her contributions to the West's Cold War victory, and for starting the process of revitalizing Britain. (A former professor of mine who specialized in modern Britain and was - of course - a dedicated left-winger always gave Mrs. Thatcher a lot of credit for making some tough decisions that had positive long-term effects on the British economy; in fact, my professor even said that the prosperity Britain enjoyed in the `90s probably had more to do with Thatcher than with Blair. Coming from a leftist, that's saying something!)
   
   Yes, this book is biased and one-sided; Mrs. Thatcher, atypically for a European leader, speaks (and writes) in a very straightforward, tell-it-like-it-is, here's-what-I-think-and-why-I'm-right fashion. (She almost seems like an American, with a habit like that!) But remember, these are memoirs. Memoirs, especially by former political leaders, are ALWAYS biased; they're not meant to be objective. Instead, they're meant to be one person's account, one person's case. If you keep that in mind, this is a very good book - huge and dense, perhaps, but worth the effort if the subject matter interests you.

No comments about Sir Winston Churchill: His Life and His Paintings.

No comments about Margaret Thatcher - The Iron Lady (Biography).

4 comments about Dark Lady: Winston Churchill's Mother and Her World.

1. While this biography deals with a fascinating (and, from all we can tell from the record, bewitching) woman, the author barely does her justice. The book seems cramped and telegraphic in approach--it presumes the reader may know more about people and events than he or she really does. There are far better books (including the two-volume Ralph Martin biography published in 1969 and 1971 and readily available) to better understand "Jennie" and the swath she cut through late Victorian and early 20th century society. That she was the mother of Sir Winston Churchill was merely icing on the cake--she had plenty going for her on her own.



2. Rich in detail. Remarkable insight into a complex character in a remarkably important family, in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.
   Politics,Monarchy and Aristocracy interwoven with sex and scandal.
   A great read for anyone interested in the Churchills.



3. This book appears to have been written in haste and not edited. It contains so many glaring factual errors, such as identifying Queen Alexandra's sister as the Duchess of Tech (definitely not, her sister was the Empress of Russia) that I came to doubt the rest of the book. At one point he seems to indicate that Catholics do not eat during Lent (that would be an extraordinary accomplishment). There is, literally, an error on every page, many of which could have been avoided by very simple and basic editing. Very annoying. I couldn't finish it.



4. This biography reads like a quickie rush to the market insant book written about some pop singer or two bit actress. In it, Jenny Jerome comes off as a truly horrible creature. How such a monster managed to attract so many men seems impossible. Plus, the bit about Catholics apparently not eating during Lent (it's 40 days long) made me laugh and this is not a comedy.