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March 13, 2017
Winston Churchill, the great WWII British prime minister, and George Orwell, celebrated author of 1984 and Animal Farm, never met. There’s no evidence that Churchill ever read a word by Orwell, and the latter never held public office. But they admired each other from afar and worked for the same purpose: to save the world from totalitarianism. Ricks (The Gamble), two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, brings the two men together in a book whose model is assumed to be Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, side-by-side sketches of people whose existence never overlapped. In vivid prose, Ricks entwines the biographies of two figures who fought in strikingly different ways to achieve similar goals. What is new in this portrayal is their juxtaposition between a single book’s covers, though it’s unclear on what grounds Ricks chooses to do so. Other politicians roused their people; other writers warned of the Nazi and Soviet menaces. However, even if Ricks isn’t convincing in his pairing of the two men, he superbly illustrates that Churchill and Orwell made enduring cases for the necessity of moral and political fortitude in the face of authoritarianism. This is a bracing work for our times.
Starred review from February 15, 2017
A joint biography of two men who "led the way, politically and intellectually, in responding to the twin totalitarian threats of fascism and communism" in the mid-20th century.As dual biographies pour off the presses, authors stretch to find a suitable pair. That includes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ricks (The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, 2012, etc.), who takes an odd tack with subjects who were neither friends, colleagues, rivals, nor enemies. Nonetheless, given the author's abundant skills, readers will thoroughly enjoy the result. Since Churchill and Orwell never met, Ricks writes separate biographies and then works hard to deliver a common theme. He succeeds because these two men made cases for individual freedom better than anyone in their century. During 1940, at a time when everyone agreed that Britain's destruction was imminent, Churchill treated Neville Chamberlain and the appeasers (who were largely responsible) with respect, ordered no mass murders or arrests, and never assumed that, in this crisis and, of course, temporarily, Britain needed a touch of Nazi ruthlessness. Orwell has always been the conservatives' favorite Marxist, although he was a faithful socialist all his life. An obscure journalist until his breakthrough with Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), he hated totalitarianism in all forms but reserved special ire for the cant and fabrication that all governments employ and that his colleagues on the left accepted when it suited their beliefs. Everyone approves of Orwell's classic statement that a lie in the service of a good cause is no less despicable than in the service of a bad cause. Yet it's never caught on; our leaders routinely announce bad news as good news, and plenty of activists consider lying a useful tactic. A superb account of two men who set standards for defending liberal democracy that remain disturbingly out of reach.
COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
April 1, 2017
Former British prime minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was a rotund, boisterous, blue-blooded Conservative who led Britain to victory in World War II. George Orwell (1903-50) was a gaunt, taciturn leftist and commoner; a foot soldier who took a fascist bullet in the Spanish Civil War, and author of the classic novels Animal Farm and 1984. What links these contrasting biographies? Former military correspondent Ricks (Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq) presents Churchill and Orwell as champions of freedom--the right of the individual to be free of totalitarian control by the state, whether fascist or communist. Notwithstanding, Orwell sometimes rehashed anti-Semitic stereotypes, while Churchill was a die-hard imperialist; consistency was neither man's hobgoblin. For his part, Ricks skirts controversy. In one memorable passage, contemporary wit Evelyn Waugh called a benign tumor removed from Churchill's dissolute son, Randolph, "the only part of him not malignant." Superficial and piquant, this quote is typical of the narrative. Churchill and Orwell's stories are fascinating and segue wonderfully into their times--or indeed, any times: Orwell leaped to the top of the best seller lists in reaction to the 2016 election of President Donald Trump. VERDICT A colorful recounting of two proclaimed freedom fighters, which is sure to entertain and intrigue almost any reader. [See Prepub Alert, 11/14/16.]--Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 1, 2016
Here's an inspired idea from veteran journalist Ricks, author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Fiasco: a dual portrait of Winston Churchill and George Orwell showing how both emerged from professional backwaters to become significant figures in the fight against fascism.
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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