Lessons From History Biographies

Accepting immorality and corruption at the highest levels eventually damages the whole society.     Antony Beevor's study of the infamous Russian monk Grigory Rasputin is a fascinating page-turner, one that is aided by Beevor's general expertise with Russian history (I cannot recall reading his previous books, but nearly all of them center on Russia). Of all the sordid tales of the Russian Revolution and the atrocities connected with it, few have intrigued the public more than the centuries-old Romanov Dynasty being partially brought down by its decision to put so much power in the hands of a semi-illiterate peasant monk with a shady reputation, partly because of all the myths and legends that have been spread of his supposed powers and resiliency. Beevor has some fun deflating those myths, but he also does not miss the deeper story of the Russian Empire's fall, a cautionary tale that we would all do well to study and remember today. As Beevor notes, it was not so much Rasp...

  Never be too certain your side is the right one.     I have read so many Lincoln-themed books now--with more waiting on my shelf!--that every time I read one I wonder if I will be able to find a new lesson to take away from it. Needless to say, I am not quite familiar with the details of his life and the major events surrounding it, and few Lincoln books these days really offer radical new discoveries. Nonetheless, he's a much more pleasant historical figure to spend time with than some of the others I have recently (I seriously never need to read a Hitler book again). Every Lincoln book tends to have a different area of focus, and Meacham (an excellent and acclaimed historian) intriguingly focuses on Lincoln's religious journey of discovery. To what extent Lincoln was seriously religious is debated to this day; he started his life as something of a skeptic, and while religious iconography seeped into all his later speeches, historians still debate how much of a "conver...

  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...