Churchill
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Andrew Roberts recorre a mais de 40 fontes históricas inéditas, incluindo os diários privados do rei Jorge VI, nunca antes usadas em biografias de Churchill, para o retratar de forma mais íntima e completa do que qualquer um dos seus predecessores. O livro não oculta as falhas de Churchill, mas permite que o leitor aprecie plenamente as virtudes do homem e do seu carácter: a capacidade titânica para trabalhar (e para beber), o talento para compreender as grandes questões do momento, a disponibilidade para correr riscos.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Roberts (Napoleon: A Life) serves up an extraordinary biography of Winston Churchill. A resolutely pro-British empire "child of the Victorian era" who was emotionally neglected by his aristocratic father and frivolous American-raised mother, Churchill by his 20s had already reported from, fought in, and sometimes written books about imperial struggles in such places as Cuba, Sudan, India, and South Africa. He leveraged fame due to an escape from Boer captivity to win an election to British parliament in 1900 at age 25. As first lord of the admiralty during WWI, he was scapegoated for the military fiasco of Gallipoli in 1915 and cast into the political wilderness, which strengthened his nonconformist, independent nature, Roberts writes, helping him when he became prime minister in 1940. Roberts captures Churchill's close working relationship with FDR ("the greatest American friend we have ever known"), his distrust of his chiefs of staff, and his excessive faith in Stalin's promises in 1945. He also captures the man, dispelling the myth that Churchill was prone to depression and revealing his deep love for his wife, Clementine; his egotism, his wit, his loyalty to friends, his penchant sometimes for "selfishness, insensitivity, and ruthlessness"; and his "sybaritic" love of good drink and cigars. This biography is exhaustively researched, beautifully written and paced, deeply admiring but not hagiographic, and empathic and balanced in its judgments a magnificent achievement.
