Churchill Sizes Up the Giants of His Age, Offers Wisdom for Our Own
Winston Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on the strength of"e,his mastery of historical and biographical description."e, Nowhere is that mastery more evident than inGreat Contemporaries(1937), which features Churchills brief lives of those he called"e,Great Men of our age."e,
Great Contemporaries profiles towering figures ranging from Franklin Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Lawrence of Arabia, and Leon Trotsky to Charlie Chaplin, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw. This edition includes five essays that have never appeared in any previous version, some thirty black-and-white photographs, and an enlightening introduction and annotations by noted Churchill scholar James W. Muller.
Written in the decade before Churchill became prime minister, the essays inGreat Contemporaries focus on the challenges of statecraft at a time when the democratic revolution was toppling older regimes based on tradition and aristocratic privilege. Churchills keen observations take on new importance in our own age of roiling political change.
Ultimately,G eat Contemporaries provides fascinating insight into the statesmans perspective. Churchills objective is clear: he tries to learn from these giants in order to discover what makes a man great. He approaches his subjects with a measuring eye, finding their limitations at least as revealing as their merits.