bookshelf

FREDERICK THE GREAT

Name: FREDERICK THE GREAT
Author: Tim Blanning
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6812-8

KING OF PRUSSIA

by Tim Blanning ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 29, 2016

While the sections about Frederick’s childhood and reign are well-written and informative, it is the war coverage that will...

bookshelf

Prussia owes its reputation as the personification of militarism to Frederick the Great (1712-1786), who, though mocked by his own father as a weakling, foreshadowed Napoleon’s military genius.

British Academy fellow Blanning (The Romantic Revolution: A History, 2012, etc.) divides his biography into childhood, the Seven Years’ War period, and Frederick’s domestic efforts and policies. Throughout, the author explores and questions his subject’s sexuality. Frederick’s court was homosocial, even homoerotic, and lacked women. There are plenty of hints in his writings, and in those about him, but never a definitive statement. Blanning leaves it to readers to decide. Frederick despised Christianity and the Catholic Church. His music, his flute, and his art collection were his escapes from enforced religion. He corresponded with Voltaire for more than 40 years and accepted counsel only from him. Upon acceding to the throne, Frederick first dismissed his wife and then set out to surpass in war and conquest the father who abused him physically and psychologically. He invaded Silesia, the first of three Silesian wars; the third was better known as the Seven Years’ War. In the middle section, Blanning concentrates on that war, demonstrating his abilities as a military historian. Frederick built a top-notch military machine, and his highly trained, devoted soldiers were well-provisioned; they not only followed him, they often saved him from his own errors. The author shows Frederick as inexperienced, inept, and overconfident. During the war, his reconnaissance was faulty, and the intelligence he received was inadequate. Facing numerically superior enemies, this absolute commander succeeded as they failed to coordinate attacks, their councils debated actions, and parliaments refused funding. His decisions to attack were quick and often wrong. As Blanning notes, “when madness succeeds, it has to be renamed audacity.” Frederick made many mistakes, but his will and determination ensured success.

While the sections about Frederick’s childhood and reign are well-written and informative, it is the war coverage that will win over readers looking for a different view of the Seven Years’ War.

Pub Date: March 29, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4000-6812-8

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016

Categories:

bookshelf

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.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

bookshelf

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...

bookshelf

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.