While the sections about Frederick’s childhood and reign are well-written and informative, it is the war coverage that will...
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
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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