THE ART OF BEING FEARLESS~Winston Churchill

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis

One of Chicago Tribune’s Best Books of the Year So Far • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR

“Churchill’s lessons of resilience and his style of steady-handed leadership are essential to the state of mind of American readers.”—Vanity Fair

On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments.

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

Comments

SILENCE IS APPROVAL~Jewish Meme

How often do we learn something awful, clam up, and ignore it, hoping it will go away. It never does, it just gets worse and our silence becomes its enabler. Life is like that, we don't want to get involved. We have enough to worry about and ignorance, after all, is bliss. Wrong, ignorance is acceptance. The easy analogy is governance. We sit in a management meeting or a board of directors where we become aware of something nefarious and keep silent for fear of being disloyal. To speak up takes courage and courage has consequences. When a whistleblower comes forward they are vilified, they become the victim of power and power corrupts. We've seen this in Washington for years, management teams being selected for their weakness rather than their strength. Weakness breeds indecision and silence, strength breeds courage. A new administration always starts with a ray of hope that the management team, aka the cabinet, will be outspoken and advise and consent with courage, no...

LEAD~MOTIVATE~INSPIRE, THAT'S WHAT A LEADER DOES

FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT We're frightened because of COVID and the economy, fair enough, but consider history. The Great Depression and the 2nd World War didn't cause more death than the pandemic, they caused more fear. The difference is, in the 1930s and '40s we had a leader that told us in a calm, reassuring voice that "we had nothing to fear but fear itself. " Fear is a crippling emotion, it causes indecision and panic during times of peril when what we need is leadership that reassures us. Remember when your kids woke up in the middle of the night with nightmares, they were scared to death. What did you do, you held them in your arms and whispered calmly that it was alright, they were safe and had nothing to fear. FDR was the nation's parent he knew that we needed reassurance that we needed that calm, strong voice leading us through a crisis. I honestly believe Joe Biden is that voice and t...

COVID ISN'T A GAME

The Russians invented it, we're playing it. Do you remember Christopher Walken in Deer Hunter, the epic film about the absurdity of the Viet Nam War? That classic scene when Walken was forced to play Russian roulette for the entertainment of his captors had me flinching in my seat as he pulled the trigger. When your life depends on chance, in Walken's case, 6 cylinders in a pistol chamber, one loaded, five empty. The chamber is spun around like a casino wheel, you aim the pistol at your temple and pull the trigger. You're playing the ultimate game of chance, if you win you live, if you lose you die. The odds are 6 to 1, not bad in Vegas, but are you willing to bet your life or your good health on it? Remember, in a game of chance, the odds favor the house. Why am I going on like this? It's simple, I have family and friends who are rationalizing their protection against COVID, they're thinking that with such a small fraction of the community getting sick that I...

Search This Blog