A sympathetic psychological study of the prince who has been working tirelessly all his life to be taken seriously.
Having written previously on other members of the modern English dynasty (Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch, 2012, etc.), British biographer Smith provides plenty of astute observations in her biography of the Prince of Wales, who is now 68. His 90-year-old mother, Queen Elizabeth II, is finally slowing down and deputizing some of her tasks to her eldest son, although she has no intention of abdicating. After espousing vociferously and often controversially throughout his life on causes he is passionate about—organic farming and other environmental issues, traditional architecture versus modern, creating opportunity and education for disadvantaged youth, alternative medicine and homeopathy, among many others—Charles seems to be toning down his rhetoric in preparation for the establishment of a more disciplined tone, à la his efficient, well-loved mother. Smith is not the first biographer to depict the young prince as love-starved, lonely, and emotionally vulnerable, although her portrait is enormously touching and supported by wide-ranging interviews and research. Elizabeth’s hands-off approach to child-raising, Charles’ father’s bullying, the hypercriticism of the press, and his position of impotence within the royal succession all colluded in pushing him into a disastrous first marriage with a far-too-young, inexperienced, and emotionally damaged soul, Diana Spencer. In fact, he always loved and needed the one woman who bolstered his confidence, listened to him, and shared his pursuits, the married Camilla Parker-Bowles. Indeed, Smith portrays Camilla in a very generous light and Diana as seriously psychologically impaired. Throughout, the author traces the roots of Charles’ many fascinating and beneficial "obsessions"; he was a prescient prince who scorned the playboy label and tried valiantly to do something good with his wealth and connections.
A thorough, timely biography of the man likely to become king in the next decade or so.Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6790-9
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | POLITICAL & ROYALTY | WORLD | HISTORY
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The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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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.
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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