Reviews Archives - Page 9 of 11 - Richard M. Langworth

Maisky and Churchill: Hard to Put Down

8 June 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Ivan Maisky: “The greatest sin of modern statesman is vacillation and ambiguity of thought and action.”

Gabriel Gorodetsky, ed., The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 634 pages, $28.80, Kindle $19.99, audiobook $36.32.

Excerpted from the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. To read in full, click here.

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A striking work of scholarship (actually an abridgement of a three-volume complete work coming in 2016), this book will inspire fresh scholarship on Churchill, Russia and World War II. Ivan Maisky was a penetrating observer of 1932-43 Britain, and Gabriel Gorodetsky connects every long gap in his diaries with informed accounts of what was happening.…

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Marshall: “Noblest Roman of Them All”

14 May 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Johns Hopkins University Press releases this month the seventh and final volume of The Papers of George Catlett Marshall: “The Man of the Age,” October 1, 1949 – October 16, 1959. It was masterfully edited by Mark Stoler and Daniel Holt under the auspices of the Marshall Center. It joins its predecessors presenting the papers of one of the greatest generals and statesmen of his age (1880-1959). I quickly assigned it for review by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, for its many references to Churchill in George Marshall’s final phase. This and the previous volume are indispensable for anyone wishing to understand the complicated international scene immediately after World War II.…

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Lehrman on Churchill and Lincoln

24 March 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Lewis E. Lehrman, co-founder of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, offers a compelling two-part comparison of Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill at the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. (To read in entirety, start here.)

Mr. Lehrman is author of Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point (2008) and Lincoln “by littles” (2013). Uniquely among the Lincoln scholars I’ve heard on Churchill, he has as fine a grasp of the English statesman as he does the American president. He tells me he regards each as the outstanding figure of his respective century. No argument there.

1. Lehrman on Preparation for Greatness

Excerpt: President Lincoln and Prime Minister Churchill found themselves challenged by wars of national survival.…

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Ty Cobb: Inconvenient Truths

10 March 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Leerhsen set out with the typical view of Ty Cobb, only to encounter scores of inconvenient truths missed or ignored by earlier biographers, whose work inspired the sick portrait in Ken Burns's documentary, Baseball. Cobb was no saint—Leerhsen documents his flaming temper and readiness for brawls—but most of the other allegations are either vastly exaggerated or demonstrably false. Cobb was 180 degrees from the popular image of a racist, murdering, spike-flying, child-hating misanthrope, who steamed stamps off the envelopes kids sent him for his autograph.

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Vox Non-Populi: More Churchill Mythology

20 February 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Winston Churchill was no saint; it is a disservice to pretend he was. But he is too complex to be pigeonholed by writers who criticize selectively. Hillsdale College’s Churchill Project responds to the mythology. Read full article.

Excerpt

Winston Churchill is in the news, as is often the case. On February 11th, Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders had words of praise for Churchill’s war leadership. Vox Media has criticized him and Churchill in sharp language. Are the criticisms of Churchill true?

During the Democrat debate on 11 February 2-16, candidates were asked to name two leaders, one American and one foreign, who would influence their policy decisions.…

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Reviews of “Churchill and the Avoidable War”

23 November 2015 Comments 0 Comments

"I’ve touched on this before: if Hitler had been assassinated in 1937, he would have gone down in history as one of the greatest Germans. If assassinated in late 1941, before the tide began to turn, he would have gone down among Germans as a military genius. Horrible as it is to say or contemplate, it was necessary for him to stay around to the bitter end so that Germans could see what fools he made of them." —Manfred Weidhorn

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“Never Surrender,” by John Kelly

17 November 2015 Comments 0 Comments

Never Surrender: Winston Churchill and Britain’s Decision to Fight Nazi Germany in the Fateful Summer of 1940, by John Kelly. Scribner, 2015, 370 pp., $19.88, Kindle $14.99.

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May 1940: Lord Halifax “sounded like a nervous solicitor reading from a half-thought-out brief….When Churchill spoke of fighting on alone, the mantle of history—Agincourt, Waterloo, Trafalgar, the Armada—sang through his sentences.”

Here is a well-written and organized review of mainly well-known events, retold with dramatic prose and crisp analysis. It’s an ideal book for young people unfamiliar with the scope of Churchill’s achievement in 1940, and, indeed, for anyone who wants a good account of the events that saved Western civilization.…

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Was WW2 Avoidable?

13 November 2015 Comments 0 Comments

continued from previous post…

Churchill and the Avoidable War

Preface

This book examines Churchill’s theory that “timely action” could have forced Hitler to recoil, and a devastating catastrophe avoided. We consider his proposals, and the degree to which he pursued them. Churchill was both right and wrong. He was right that Hitler could have been stopped. He was wrong in not doing all he could to stop him. The result is a corrective to traditional arguments, both of Churchill’s critics and defenders. Whether the war was avoidable hangs on these issues.

Chapter 1. Germany Arming: Encountering Hitler, 1930-34

“There is no difficulty at all in having cordial relations between the peoples….But…

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Announcing “Churchill and the Avoidable War”

9 November 2015 Comments 0 Comments

It is proper to consider the lessons of the past as a guide to similar challenges now and in the future. But as Churchill wrote: "Let no one look down on those honourable, well-meaning men whose actions are chronicled in these pages, without searching his own heart, reviewing his own discharge of public duty, and applying the lessons of the past to his future conduct."

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