A shrewd analyst of American politics turns his gaze eastward to the Glorious Revolution that placed William and Mary on England’s throne and served as an example to America’s Founders.
Following the English Civil War and the uneasy Restoration of Charles II, James II became king in 1685, determined to make England safe for Catholicism. To this end, he manipulated elections to Parliament, eliminated many representative assemblies and otherwise intemperately exercised royal control. Meanwhile, William of Orange, stadtholder of the United Netherlands and husband of James’s daughter Mary, was determined to oppose the hegemonic ambitions of France’s Sun King. Fearful that James might ally with Louis XIV, William invaded England in 1688 with a force of 500 ships and 15,000 men. Barone (Hard America, Soft America, 2005, etc.) attributes William’s largely bloodless victory not so much to his considerable talents as a soldier-king, but rather to his sublime understanding and mastery of politics. Accustomed to the Dutch exercise of tolerance and a free press, William used pamphlets and newsletters to sway an increasingly literate public and prepare the ground for his “invitation” to Britain. He convinced the English that he would end the untrammeled power of James and his counselors, ensure a free and lawful Parliament and save the Church of England and the ancient constitution. With the help of talented general John Churchill (who betrayed the king), William maneuvered brilliantly to achieve his larger political goal of binding England to a war with France. He allowed James to escape the island, avoiding the threat of regicide. He also acceded to the Declaration of Rights, guaranteeing citizens’ rights to petition and keep arms, prohibiting excessive bail, fines and illegal punishments. These rights, Barone argues, along with William’s promise not to interfere with Parliament, are precisely what the American colonists had in mind 75 years later.
Brisk, thoughtful assessment of the full significance and implications of an episode in British history underappreciated on this side of the Atlantic.Pub Date: May 8, 2007
ISBN: 1-4000-9792-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2007
Categories: HISTORY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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BOOK REVIEW
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
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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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.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-2671-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
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