Lessons From History Biographies

  Be careful who you hitch your wagon to. Writing this blog out on my phone because my laptop alas won’t work properly in this hotel room I’m currently in, so apologies to my readers if this format is funkier than normal! Stacy Schiff is a prolific historical writer (some of her more recent excellent works being studies of the Salem Witch Trials and Samuel Adams), but 2010’s Cleopatra: A Life  might be her most iconic book, having stayed on bestseller lists for years after its release. I only recently managed to catch up with it, courtesy of my local used paperback book store; I had avoided it for so long because I’ve never been all that interested in the subject matter, and it was only after loving some of Schiff’s other work that I decided to give this one a try. I was quite glad I did, because Cleopatra is a fascinating portrait of a woman desperately trying to maintain an empire on its last legs, and inadvertently dooming it in the process. Cleopatra’s story is an historic...

  Hatred and intolerance is a disease that only destroys.     Prior to catching up with Laurence Rees' amazing 2017 book The Holocaust: A New History , it had been a good 15 years or so since I had read a book solely devoted to the topic of Nazi Germany and/or the atrocities committed in its name; there are people who can't get enough of such historical studies, but I find them uniquely dark and terrible works that have the power to depress me indefinitely. Rees' book is a vital work that should absolutely be read by everyone, while at the same time I wouldn't mind taking another 15 years off before I revisit the subject again. There are a variety of serious historical lesson to take away from the crimes of the Holocaust, and all too many people learned the wrong ones from it (one popular modern version: the Holocaust was a uniquely horrible and unforgivable historical crime [which is definitely true on some levels], and that means no other crimes could ever be compared...

Sometimes, to defeat a greater enemy, you have to compromise with people you might detest.     That historical lesson is a common takeaway from the Allied victory in World War II, and it was absolutely true as the Americans, British, and Soviets all had to tolerate some fairly awful behavior from their allies in order to defeat the evil of Nazi Germany. In his relatively brief, page-turning study of the Allies, Giles Milton in The Stalin Affair focuses on studying the alliance through the eyes of the American diplomat W. Averell Harriman and his entourage. Needing to work with unsavory characters is a tried-and-true lesson of many historical movements, but it was especially true when trying to destroy the monstrosity of fascism. Milton's book claims to tell the story of how FDR, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin set aside differences and old animosities to work together to win the war, but he overwhelmingly focuses on the unique characters of Churchill and Stalin, two uniqu...

  Great leaders must always be willing to learn new things.     This blog post will be a relatively short one, as William Fowler's George Washington and the Creation of the American Republic is a relatively short book, clocking in at under 200 pages when sources and notes are not taken into account. Although easy to read, Fowler's book is a deep-dive on a very specific period of Washington's life (the six years between him leading America to victory during the American Revolution, and subsequently assuming the first presidency of its new Constitution), and to that end it is certainly of much more interest to Washington scholars and professional historians. That said, one element I did find fascinating in Fowler's book in terms of historical lessons was Washington's private interests during this quiet era, and how his curiosity about the world around him continued to aid his evolution as one of the great leaders of his era.     From a modern perspective, one of t...

Every great artist needs both the freedom to follow their visions, and the pressure to eventually complete them.     Of all the fields of History I have studied in my decades of loving the topic, my knowledge of Art History has always been sadly limited. Partly this is my own lack of artistic vision; from my earliest academic days, my strength has always been in reading and writing, and not so much in any sort of visual talent or appreciation of what one looked like. To that end, I was well aware that the Renaissance artists were great men who made timeless artistic masterpieces, yet I knew very little about their lives or the details of what their art meant to them. Having discovered Miles Unger's 2014 study of Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces , I have a new appreciation for what the man accomplished, as well as an understanding of the complexities of dealing with tortured artists, many of whom have ambitions they could never accomplish without outside deadlines and d...

  Being a great president requires one to grow when faced with crisis.     There is no shortage of biographies of the famous 20th century president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (aka FDR), and a few of them I have already enjoyed in my personal book collection. However, it was only courtesy of my local used bookstore that I finally caught up with Jean Smith's 2007 massive biographical study of him, and I am quite glad I took the time to do so. Smith paints a compelling portrait of a man who went through great physical suffering, and came out the other end of it a more empathetic and determined leader, one uniquely suited to leading the United States through the great crisis years of the 1930's and 1940's.     FDR's general life details are well known, and Smith recounts them in an in-depth and compelling fashion. Born a child of great wealth and privilege (his parents being deeply embedded in the fashionable wealthy society of Gilded Age America), FDR saw his elderl...