Churchill: Visionary. Statesman. Historian.

by John Lukacs

Overview

“Lukacs convincingly portrays a leader of an empire in irreversible decline and a towering, if flawed, hero of our time.”—Publishers Weekly

In previous works, John Lukacs told the story of Winston Churchill’s titanic struggle with Adolf Hitler in the early days of World War II. Now, he turns his attention to the man himself, the workings of his historical imagination, and his successes and failures as a visionary statesman.
 
Chapter by chapter, Lukacs assesses Churchill’s vital relationships with Stalin, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower; his complex, farsighted political vision concerning the coming of WWII and the Cold War; his abilities as a historian looking backward into the origins of the conflicts of which he was so much a part; and the often contradictory ways in which he has been perceived by critics and admirers alike. In addition, Lukacs describes his three days spent in London attending Churchill’s funeral in 1965.
 
“Superb…[a] tour de force.”—Foreign Affairs
 
“Lukacs’ ability to meld the scholarly with the popular is much in evidence here.”—Booklist 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300129250
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	08/11/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	219
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

John Lukacs is the author of more than twenty books on history.

Table of Contents

	Preface	xi
1	Churchill the visionary	1
2	Churchill and Stalin	19
3	Churchill and Roosevelt	49
4	Churchill and Eisenhower	67
5	Churchill, Europe, and appeasement	83
6	Churchill's historianship	101
7	His failures. His critics	129
8	Two recent biographies	155
9	Churchill's funeral	163

Editorial Reviews

John Lukacs has authored more than 20 books on 20th-century history, but perhaps the most central figure in all his work is Winston Churchill. One senses that the British prime minister engages Lukacs deeply both as a world leader and as a fellow world-class historian. In Churchill: Visionary, Statesman, Historian, Lukacs addresses this enigmatic titan in his varied roles as wartime politician, Cold War prophet, and reflective chronicler. The study culminates in Lukacs' very personal evocation of his three-day visit to London in 1965 for Churchill's funeral. Lukacs' examination of Churchill's complicated relationships with Stalin, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower presents these World War II leaders in a new light.

Lukacs' ability to meld the scholarly with the popular is much in evidence here.

Booklist

. . .[T]his book [consists of] tightly constructed essay[s] based on a thorough familiarity with. . . Churchill. . .[G]ood. . . for academic and. . . public libraries.

Library Journal

A prolific senior historian of modern Europe, Lukacs has written about Churchill many times before, most recently in Five Days in London, May 1940. That recycled a small part of his The Duel: 10 May-31 July: The Eighty-Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler. This rather thin new volume contains little that is new, and is seemingly a reorganization of Lukacs's lecture notes, leavings, reconsiderations and reviews. There are shrewd chapters on Churchill's cautious relations with Stalin, Roosevelt and Eisenhower, and on Churchill's critics. There are reevaluations of Churchill as a visionary and as a historian capable of "splendid phrases and passages," often at his best when "personal and participatory." Although Lukacs credits Churchill's extraordinary army of research assistants over much of a lifetime for his massive output, he fails to note that much of the work was written to order, fat contracts supporting an authorial lifestyle almost unique in his time. A chapter on Churchill and Eisenhower persuasively takes the political general down a peg or two, and the excoriation (and exposure) of the pompous Churchill-baiter John Charmley is overdue. A final chapter, personal observations on the three days in January 1965 when Lukacs went to London to observe the great man's obsequies, seems either padding or self-indulgence. Overall, though, Lukacs convincingly portrays a leader of an empire in irreversible decline and a towering, if flawed, hero of our time. (Oct.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

John Lukacs' appreciation of Churchill makes this volume the perfect follow-on to Keegan's biography. Lukacs--Hungarian-born, proud of Europe's cultural heritage, a longtime resident of the U.S. (and another American Heritage contributor)--is an extraordinary historian, whose pathbreaking works have rightly won him acclaim. He makes an overpowering case for Churchill as a visionary, not least because, before others, Churchill recognized the mortal danger posed by Adolf Hitler, and in 1946 warned of the Soviet Union's Iron Curtain. In 1940 only Churchill stood between Hitler and conquest, something many historians, addicted as they are to the "impersonal forces" of human events, find hard to fathom. (3 Mar 2003)
—Steve Forbes

Forbes Magazine