FREDERICK THE GREAT

Name: FREDERICK THE GREAT
Author: David Fraser
ISBN: 0-88064-261-0

by David Fraser ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001

A trenchant piece of biographical writing, giving readers a Frederick’s-eye-view of the mare’s nest of 18th-centruy European...

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A commanding and militarily vibrant biography of the peerless Prussian autocrat from one of Britain’s premier generals—and novelists.

Fraser (Knight’s Cross, 1994, etc.) well appreciates that Frederick of Prussia wasn’t called “Great” for nothing: He had intellect and wit, was an adroit diplomat, tolerant, and kept an eye skinned for the interests of the common man (he wanted to be remembered as “King of the Beggars”). He was also perhaps a bit hasty, rash even, although that often served to benefit him as a brave and farsighted commander of his forces. But Fraser ultimately admits that, for all of Frederick’s professed love of justice, there was the “conflict, never resolved, between his belief in the actual advantages of monarchical autocracy (in hands like his own) and his enduring belief—equally sincere—in the rights and dignity of man.” As the author makes plain, the buck stopped with Frederick on all matters (from the new opera house to the decision to invade Austria, again and again and again) and, although he was never one to avoid a confrontation, he was also an exemplar of realpolitik. Fraser turns his attention to all aspects of Frederick’s reign, and there is enough page space for him to dip into everything from court life and Frederick’s writings on political philosophy to his envy of Voltaire. This is a popular account, and if, at times, the writing feels like it is stuffed with feathers (“he introduced the young prince . . . to the possible delights of women”), it must be said that the author is never happier than when getting his teeth into one of Frederick’s frequent military battles—which receive extensive treatment.

A trenchant piece of biographical writing, giving readers a Frederick’s-eye-view of the mare’s nest of 18th-centruy European geopolitics. (16 pp. illustrations)

Pub Date: May 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-88064-261-0

Page Count: 720

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001

Categories:

HISTORY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY

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A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979

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For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0061965588

Page Count: 772

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
A YOUNG PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
by Howard Zinn ; adapted by Rebecca Stefoff with by Ed Morales

- BOOK REVIEW
TRUTH HAS A POWER OF ITS OWN
by Howard Zinn with Ray Suarez

- BOOK REVIEW
THE HISTORIC UNFULFILLED PROMISE
by Howard Zinn

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1776

by David McCullough ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2005

Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.

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A master storyteller’s character-driven account of a storied year in the American Revolution.

Against world systems, economic determinist and other external-cause schools of historical thought, McCullough (John Adams, 2001, etc.) has an old-fashioned fondness for the great- (and not-so-great) man tradition, which may not have much explanatory power but almost always yields better-written books. McCullough opens with a courteous nod to the customary villain in the story of American independence, George III, who turns out to be a pleasant and artistically inclined fellow who relied on poor advice; his Westmoreland, for instance, was a British general named Grant who boasted that with 5,000 soldiers he “could march from one end of the American continent to the other.” Other British officers agitated for peace, even as George wondered why Americans would not understand that to be a British subject was to be free by definition. Against these men stood arrayed a rebel army that was, at the least, unimpressive; McCullough observes that New Englanders, for instance, considered washing clothes to be women’s work and so wore filthy clothes until they rotted, with the result that Burgoyne and company had a point in thinking the Continentals a bunch of ragamuffins. The Americans’ military fortunes were none too good for much of 1776, the year of the Declaration; at the slowly unfolding battle for control over New York, George Washington was moved to despair at the sight of sometimes drunk soldiers running from the enemy and of their officers “who, instead of attending to their duty, had stood gazing like bumpkins” at the spectacle. For a man such as Washington, to be a laughingstock was the supreme insult, but the British were driven by other motives than to irritate the general—not least of them reluctance to give up a rich, fertile and beautiful land that, McCullough notes, was providing the world’s highest standard of living in 1776.

Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.