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FIGHTING CHURCHILL, APPEASING HITLER

Name: FIGHTING CHURCHILL, APPEASING HITLER
Author: Adrian Phillips
ISBN: 978-1-64313-221-1

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN, SIR HORACE WILSON, & BRITAIN'S PLIGHT OF APPEASEMENT: 1937-1939

by Adrian Phillips ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 3, 2019

A fresh interpretation of the question of appeasement that will interest students of 20th-century history.

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A complex tale of the political rivalry that underlay a key episode in 20th-century world events.

Although the efforts of Neville Chamberlain to preserve the peace in Europe by accommodating Hitler’s demands for territory have long been viewed as an act of moral cowardice, British historian Phillips (The King Who Had To Go: Edward VIII, Mrs. Simpson and the Hidden Politics of the Abdication Crisis, 2017, etc.) notes that it had a certain logic, since going to war with Germany might put the entire British Empire at risk. That empire, he writes, “had been built in the days when France was its only challenger, but now Germany, Japan, and the United States had the resources to put its standing to the severest of tests.” The behind-the-scenes architect of appeasement was Chamberlain’s adviser Horace Wilson; arrayed against them was Winston Churchill, who insisted on a vigorous policy of containment. Chamberlain was willing to go to unusual measures to placate Hitler, including giving in to his demands that African colonies seized by Britain after World War I be returned to Germany—at the risk, the British understood, that the colonized peoples might become ardent Nazis and new enemies. (In any event, notes the author, those peoples were never consulted about whether they wanted to be ruled by a foreign power in the first place.) Chamberlain and Wilson calculated wrongly that the economic costs of rearmament would help keep Hitler in check, and they also took the curious position that Churchill and his allies in government proved a greater danger to the peace than the fascist dictators then in power. In the end, it became clear that Britain would not be able to avoid war, and Churchill accordingly rose to serve as prime minister in Chamberlain’s stead. Churchill, though vain and capable of exercising questionable judgment, was ordinarily a hard fighter who bore no grudges, but Phillips writes that he seems to have taken pleasure in stripping Wilson of his positions and making his life otherwise difficult after Chamberlain’s fall.

A fresh interpretation of the question of appeasement that will interest students of 20th-century history.

Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-64313-221-1

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Pegasus

Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.