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Great Contemporaries MP3 CD – Unabridged, August 9, 2016
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Great Contemporaries profiles towering figures ranging from Franklin Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Lawrence of Arabia and Leon Trotsky to Charlie Chaplin, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling and George Bernard Shaw. Written in the decade before Churchill became prime minister, the essays in Great Contemporaries focus on the challenges of statecraft at a time when the democratic revolution was toppling older regimes based on tradition and aristocratic privilege.
Churchill's keen observations take on new importance in our own age of roiling political change. Ultimately, Great Contemporaries provides fascinating insight into the statesman's perspective.
Churchill's objective is clear: he tries to learn from these giants what makes a man great. He approaches his subjects with a measuring eye, finding their limitations at least as revealing as their merits. This new edition of Great Contemporaries brings back Churchill's unmatched insights and unforgettable prose for a new generation of listeners and leaders.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAudible Studios on Brilliance Audio
- Publication dateAugust 9, 2016
- Dimensions6.5 x 0.63 x 5.5 inches
- ISBN-101531808964
- ISBN-13978-1531808969
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Product details
- Publisher : Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio; Unabridged edition (August 9, 2016)
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 1531808964
- ISBN-13 : 978-1531808969
- Item Weight : 3.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 0.63 x 5.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,268,605 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,182 in Poetry Literary Criticism (Books)
- #4,658 in Books on CD
- #5,284 in Literary Criticism & Theory
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About the author
![](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/amzn-author-media-prod/ct59eka121dcn4h3nu429fp0tg._SY600_.jpg)
Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965) has been called 'the greatest Briton'. An international statesman, orator, biographer, historian, author and Nobel Prize winner, his works remain in print with the world's leading publishers.
Educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, Winston spent several years in the army before becoming a newspaper correspondent and then an MP. His cabinet positions included First Lord of the Admiralty at the outbreak of the First World War and later Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940 and for five years led Britain though its 'finest hour'. Defeated in the July 1945 election, he was Leader of the Opposition until re-elected Prime Minister in 1951. He was knighted in 1953, the same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He stepped down as Prime Minister in 1955 and remained an MP until 1964.
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Great Contemporaries is a series of essays written between 1929 and 1937 on the "great" leaders of the day. Churchill knew many of these leaders personally, and is able to supplement what might otherwise be a dry recitation of the facts of a career with personal stories and vignettes.
Perhaps the most famous of the essays is on "Hitler and his Choice, 1935." This essay is often cited by neo-Nazis and far leftists as proof that Churchill actually admired Hitler. But finally getting the chance to read the essay shows that any such analysis takes Churchill's words extremely out of context. Hitler was to be Churchill's great antagonist in the coming decade. In 1935, Churchill recognized that Hitler was facing a choice - would Hitler take a moderate road and perhaps be remembered as the leader who restored German honor, or who Hitler take the road of war. Churchill ends the essay with a warning, that German rearmament was continuing, and, of course, tragically, Churchill's misgivings were played out.
One problem, with this book is that many of the "great" men described are almost forgotten today, at least outside their home countries. Men like the Earl of Rosebery (Prime Minister in the 1890s) or King Alfosno XIII of Spain probably make no impression on the American reader while George Curzon is remembered, if at all, as the man who roughly proposed the border between Poland and the Soviet Union (the "Curzon Line").
The book includes essays on well-remembered men such as George Bernard Shaw, Clemenceau and Churchill's protégé T.E. Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia"). These essays, full of personal remembrances by Churchill, are well worth the time.
Written in his usual admirable style, these are Churchill's extended character sketches of the great men of his time, ranging from the very well-known (Trotsky, Hitler, FDR, Lawrence of Arabia) to people you have probably never heard of, such as the first Earl of Birkenhead and the Earl of Rosebery. After reading them, you will wish you had known them... Not one person in the U.S. Congress can pass comparison with "F.E.," the first Earl of Birkenhead. These were largely men raised as aristocrats, very well educated, and with huge personal abilities of their own. The chapter on Asquith will open your eyes.
It makes our leaders look like midgets.
Highly recommended, indeed!
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The majority of the subjects were political or military figures of the preceding thirty years, sometimes friends and colleagues, sometimes parliamentary opponents, and the book sparkles with personal insights gained from life both in Westminster and on the Western Front.
As the various anniversaries of events in the 1914-18 war are approaching, this book is also an excellent, concise briefing on many of the British and French leaders with whom Churchill served: Asquith, Balfour, Haig, French and Fisher for Britain, Clemenceau and Foch for France. Naturally, his profiles of the Kaiser and Hindenburg were written from (to say the least) a greater distance.
This is a diverse collection; among others encountered are George Bernard Shaw, Parnell, Philip Snowden, King George V, Lawrence of Arabia, Baden-Powell and, viewed from 1935 with the prescience that most people at that time still chose to ignore, Hitler.
The most personal contribution is the essay on his great friend Frederick `F.E.' Smith. The opening line illustrates one of the great strengths of this collection; written for busy readers of newspapers, each essay seizes your attention and holds it. "A hundred years ago, Thomas Smith was the best runner and the most redoubtable knuckle-fighter in the West Riding of Yorkshire." After such an introduction, could any reader not wish to read on and discover how his great-grandson "became Lord Chancellor of England."?
This edition is a reprint of that of 1942, which extended but rarely altered the original 1937 collection. Churchill assumed his original readers would be aware of the major issues of the day and so does not reiterate every detail of each referenced fact or person. However, with his explanation and analysis of significant events in the lives he is describing, and the many interactions between the "Great Contemporaries", it is not difficult to absorb the political intrigues of a century ago through the prose and the almost spoken presence of the very greatest of their contemporaries.
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