A lively tale of monarchical machinations, more familiar to American readers since The King’s Speech.
A spirited historical lesson that traces how the fallout from the abdication crisis of Edward VIII in 1936 ultimately aided England in its finest hour.
What if Edward VIII, the pro-German Duke of Windsor, had not abdicated to marry twice-divorced Wallis Simpson and instead compelled his country to accept appeasement with Germany? British author Cadbury (Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers, 2010, etc.) explores the many layers involved in the abdication crisis of 1936, which ceded the British crown to the seemingly least prepared of the four sons of George V, George VI, aka Bertie, who revealed himself in the subsequent crisis of war the most suitable and stalwart of all. Not only was Bertie plagued by the famous stutter, but he always played second fiddle to his older brother—the dazzlingly charming and smart David. Bertie had little confidence in himself, living “with the constant unspoken reproach of failing to live up to people’s expectations of royalty.” Even Winston Churchill, a great friend of David, wondered if the monarchy shouldn’t skip over the other two sons and settle on the youngest, the Duke of Kent (Prince George), who was most like his oldest brother, dashing and capable. Nonetheless, the coming clash with the Nazis would sift the dynastic wheat from the chaff: While David and his new bride wallowed in France, traitorously visited Hitler, curried favor with high-ranking Nazis and seriously entertained fantasies of being replaced on the British throne once the Germans conquered Britain, the other three brothers plunged into the war effort. Wonderfully sympathetic to George VI in his defining moments (while excoriating the Windsors), Cadbury weaves an engaging portrait of a king resigned to his fate yet honorably resolute, gaining the cooperation of his two loyal brothers, Gloucester and Kent, and keeping his wayward brother at arm’s length and out of trouble.
A lively tale of monarchical machinations, more familiar to American readers since The King’s Speech.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61039-403-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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