The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm by William Manchester and Paul Reid (biography)

In 1984 The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory was published, the first volume of William Manchester's biography of Winston Churchill. Volume 2 (Alone) followed in 1989. Manchester stepped aside from Churchill to write A World Lit Only By Fire, then intended to return to and finish Churchill. But his health began to decline and it became clear he was not going to be able to finish. Fortunately he turned the project over to Paul Reid before his death, and Reid has completed the work. While it doesn't quite live up to two decades of anticipation, it's nonetheless a fine book.

These volumes are both history and biography, and it would be fair to call them a history of the British Empire as lived by Winston Churchill. It covers the Empire from its peak to its essential dissolution, focusing on how Churchill lived through and influenced huge swathes of it. In the first two volumes Churchill grows up, aims high, stumbles and falls, and recovers admirably. Volume 2 closes with Churchill returning from the political wilderness to become Prime Minister just as Hitler begins to move against Britain.

Defender of the Realm shows Churchill to be the right man at the right time. His public face inspired Britain to hang on during the years they held the western front alone. His private one was more pragmatic and realistic, but we come to understand there was less difference between them than it seemed at first. Churchill knew instinctively that to hold out would require convincing the population that the war could and would be won, but that doing so would be a horribly difficult, painful and prolonged task. Once one see the forces arrayed against them, his classic "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat" becomes almost an understatement. The common man would have to bear the brunt of suffering and fighting, and Churchill understood that. In spite of being an aristocrat to the bone, he managed to cross the class divide and make a direct connection with the working-class public. The authors present him heroically in this, and that's as it should be.

The book is not a paean to Churchill. He was often rude, sometimes treated staff and family with casual cruelty or volcanic anger, and never apologized. He bubbled over with ideas, most of them impractical. He wasted huge amounts of his and his staffs time with details that should have been left to others. He was at his worst after a success, flying off on new projects that would prevent the consolidation of a success. One of his aides later published a quite damning memoir of his dealings with Churchill. That publication (which the authors quote from frequently) included both an apology to and an appreciation of Churchill obtained in retrospect. The assessment of Churchill at the time is accurate, as is the appreciation in retrospect. Churchill was a flawed and complex man, and the biography reflects that honestly.

One particularly enjoyable point is the wit. Churchill was famous for some of his comments, and they were broadly displayed in the first two volumes. They are not as prominent here, but that's largely because there was less time for repartee and fewer British opponents to spend it on. In volume three the authors spend more time on the words of others, and they manage to slip in a few of their own. A couple of my favorites:

• The authors on Averell Harriman, US Ambassador to England: “. . . [Churchill's daughter-in-law] was certainly taken with him, and within a few weeks, taken by him.”
• Evelyn Waugh on Randolph Churchill having a biopsy for suspected lung cancer: “It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the one part of Randolph which was not malignant and remove it.”

There are plenty more, but I'll leave them for your enjoyment.

On a personal level, I wanted deeply to love this book. The first two volumes were wonderful, and by comparison this one seems a bit flat to me. There are two reasons for this, neither of which is the fault of the authors.

The first is Churchill himself. By 1940, Churchill is in his 60s and fully formed in both his virtues and his flaws. Both are fully displayed here, but we don't see the growth that was so interesting in the first two volumes. This is to be expected, but it makes him a bit less interesting as a person.

The other is the reader (me). All three of these volumes are both history and biography. The first two covered periods I wasn't particularly familiar with, and as such were of interest on both fronts. By the time Defender of the Realm was published I was already very familiar with World War II in Europe, and didn't learn much from the book that I didn't already know. Fortunately, seeing the war by looking over Churchill's shoulder was a fine new viewpoint, and it gave me a better appreciation of the whys of the political and military events. I read the 1050+ pages in about a week, and it wasn't an effort.

Overall I recommend this book, but with warnings. You should definitely read the first two volumes before this one. And if you're already up to speed on World War II in Europe, be prepared for a lot of material you're already familiar with, but presented from a different and interesting point of view. Still, though, strongly recommended -- especially if you start from the beginning.

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, by Daniel Okrent (history)

This was actually the first book I finished in 2013, and it may wind up being the best book of history and politics read this year. Yes, that's even with the competition from Adam Goodheart's 1861: Civil War Awakening, which I've already praised lavishly.

Good histories bring you an understanding of the times, forces, and people of the period. Great histories do the same and link you to how the events of the past continue influence the present. In this, Last Call succeeds in spades. The epilogue opens with this statement:

In almost every respect imaginable, Prohibition was a failure. It encouraged criminality and institutionalized hypocracy. It deprived the government of revenue, stripped the gears of the political system, and imposed profound limitations on individual rights. It fostered a culture of bribery, blackmail, and official corruption.

In those four sentences, Okrent sums up Prohibition and what it did to the U.S. What is presented more strongly in the body of the book is how those events changed the nature of American politics and fostered the single-issue movements that have polarized Congress and society of today. It shows plainly the process by which a well-focused single-issue minority can override the will of a majority. For Prohibition, that process created a group of shock troop voters who subordinated every issue to one, regardless of how well a candidate did or didn't represent the rest of their interests. With some additional complexity, one can clearly see it in the US politics of the election of Ronald Reagan.

This is not to say that the time of Prohibition was identical to ours. There were a number of significant differences. In particular, during the period that Okrent covers we did not have the extreme division of Congress that we see today. Instead, politicians clustered more towards the middle and every race was more competitive. Under those conditions, a single dedicated group of single-issue voters could and did make a difference, strongly determining which candidates were elected. Even incumbents who didn't toe the line were regularly turned out of office if they did not vote the right way on the issue. The supporters of Prohibition exploited that ruthlessly. It was and is a model for litmus-test politics, and Okrent cites modern pols who pay homage to it.

The final section covers the combination of events that culminated in the unlikely passage of the 21st amendment. This is the only section that I'd really like to have seen more on. One can read between the lines and infer how the death of some of the major figures combined with their overreaching to splinter the movement, but it doesn't show enough about how the supporters of repeal managed to get it past some formidable hurdles. In particular, there's not enough presented to really see how repeal got passed enough of the more dry states to actually become the 21st amendment. There are probably some interesting histories out there on the topic; I'd love to see Okrent return to it.

In conclusion: highly recommended.

1861: CIVIL WAR AWAKENING by Adam Goodheart (history)

Last year I heard a fascinating interview with Adam Goodheart about this book. He and the interviewer discussed an incident very early in the war when three slaves building fortifications for the army of Virginia fled to the nearby Union fort, Fortress Monroe, arriving Thursday May 23. The commander at Monroe was Major General Benjamin Butler, a lawyer with little military experience. When a representative of the owner came on Saturday to claim the slaves, he had to make a tough decision. Under Union law, he was obliged to return them. This went against his grain for a number of reasons, and with the help of a little military law he found a middle course. Since the slaves were being used to construct Confederate fortifications, they were lawfully seizable as military supplies. He declared the escaped slaves contraband of war and declined their return. Thus he avoided returning the slaves, damaged the Confederate war effort, and stayed on the correct side of all Union laws and most Virginia law. The owner did not press his claim further, Butler informed Washington of his actions, and it all seemed to be over. On the next day, a Sunday, more slaves fled to Fortress Monroe. By Wednesday, one soldier wrote home "Slaves are brought in here hourly." By the end of May, it was happening all across the Union/Confederate border. The South was in a serious conundrum - lose your slaves on the front, or take more men from home and leave homes undefended against the slaves. The impact on the war was profound.

This anecdote, with far more detail and breadth than I've provided here, is Chapter 8 of 1861. Each chapter follows the same general mode. It focuses on a few people, some well-known, some not, and how their actions during the first half of that year shaped the war and the politics of the time. The reader comes away with an understanding of how everyone's thinking and actions affected the national sentiment for and against the war, for and against slavery, for and against equality. In particular, it made me understand how the Great Compromise that preserved the Union for so long led both sides into a trap of double-think about slavery and equality. The thought of breaking up the Union was anathema to many, and many subverted their own thinking rather than consider the long-term result of either action or inaction. After reading it, I have a much better understanding of how the issues could simmer for so long in the face of what seem obvious final outcomes.

This book is about people. The events are important, but they are both the result of the actions of people and the framework that impels people to the next events. With this presentation, it shows how people thought during that time and how that thinking changed. Each event narrowed the path and made the war more likely. But when choices were removed, things that could not have been considered before became thinkable, then possible and then real. Butler's decision above is a fine example, but the book is full of them. There are nine chapters covering nine groups; Butler and the Fortress Monroe contraband are only one. All were interesting, most were moving, all were an education about the time, the events, and the country of 1961. Recommended.