Churchill and Orwell [large print] : the fight for freedom / Thomas E. Ricks.

By:

Ricks, Thomas E [author.]

Material type: Text

TextSeries: Thorndike Press large print popular and narrative nonfiction | Thorndike Press large print popular and narrative nonfictionPublisher: Waterville, Maine : Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, a Cengage Company, 2017Copyright date: ©2017Edition: Large print editionDescription: 589 pages (large print) ; 23 cmContent type:

text

Media type:

unmediated

Carrier type:

volume

ISBN:

9781432841171
1432841173

Other title:

Fight for freedom

Subject(s): Genre/Form:

Biographies.

DDC classification:

941.084092/2 B 23

Contents:

The two Winstons -- Churchill the adventurer -- Orwell the policeman -- Churchill: Down and out in the 1930s -- Orwell becomes "Orwell": Spain 1937 -- Churchill becomes "Churchill": Spring 1940 -- Fighting the Germans, reaching out to the Americans: 1940- 1941 -- Churchill, Orwell, and the class war in Britain: 1941 -- Enter the Americans: 1941-1942 -- Grim visions of the postwar world: 1943 -- Animal Farm: 1943-1945 -- Churchill (and Britain) in decline and triumph: 1944-1945 -- Churchill's revenge: The war memoirs -- Orwell in triumph and decline: 1945-1950 -- Churchill's premature afterlife: 1950-1965 -- Orwell's extraordinary ascension: 1950-2016 -- Afterword: The path of Churchill and Orwell.

Summary: Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930's -- Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that, by the end of the 20th century, they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and in deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930's, democracy was discredited in many circles and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism, but saw in Hitler and Mussolini "men we could do business with," if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign, but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedom -- that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted. In the 1940's, both worked to triumph over freedom's enemies. Though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course, and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, their lives are a testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it can take to stay true to it, through thick and thin.

Fiction notes: Click to open in new window

Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Book	Bedford Public Library Large Print Biography	Large Print	BIO CHURCHILL RIC	Available		32500001735340

Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A New York Times BestsellerFrom two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas E. Ricks comes a dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, whose farsighted vision and inspired action preserved democracy from the threat of totalitarianism. Taken together, their lives are a testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it can take to stay true to it.

This large print edition excludes the 16 pages of illustrations and index found in the regular print edition.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 453-586)

Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930's -- Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that, by the end of the 20th century, they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and in deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930's, democracy was discredited in many circles and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism, but saw in Hitler and Mussolini "men we could do business with," if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign, but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedom -- that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted. In the 1940's, both worked to triumph over freedom's enemies. Though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course, and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, their lives are a testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it can take to stay true to it, through thick and thin.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

If anyone doubts that history can be drastically altered by the actions of a few individuals, they should listen to this outstanding double biography about two men who changed the course of world events. If it had not been for George Orwell and Winston Churchill and their defense of democracy when an alarming percentage of people wanted to view Adolph Hitler and Nazism in a positive light, the outcome of World War II might have been horribly different. Through the men's writings and through Churchill's orations, Ricks demonstrates that the pair fought against the tide of appeasement and recognized the evils of Hitler early enough to make a significant difference. It is rare that two distinct biographies can be told with the boldness and freshness that Ricks brings to this highly recommended audiobook, and the academic and skillful narration by James Lurie adds greatly to the its value. VERDICT All libraries would serve their patrons well by having this work in their collections. ["Sure to entertain and intrigue almost any reader": LJ 4/1/17 review of the Penguin hc.]-Joseph L. Carlson, Vandenberg Air Force Base Lib., Lompoc, CA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Winston Churchill, the great WWII British prime minister, and George Orwell, celebrated author of 1984 and Animal Farm, never met. There's no evidence that Churchill ever read a word by Orwell, and the latter never held public office. But they admired each other from afar and worked for the same purpose: to save the world from totalitarianism. Ricks (The Gamble), two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, brings the two men together in a book whose model is assumed to be Plutarch's Parallel Lives, side-by-side sketches of people whose existence never overlapped. In vivid prose, Ricks entwines the biographies of two figures who fought in strikingly different ways to achieve similar goals. What is new in this portrayal is their juxtaposition between a single book's covers, though it's unclear on what grounds Ricks chooses to do so. Other politicians roused their people; other writers warned of the Nazi and Soviet menaces. However, even if Ricks isn't convincing in his pairing of the two men, he superbly illustrates that Churchill and Orwell made enduring cases for the necessity of moral and political fortitude in the face of authoritarianism. This is a bracing work for our times. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Winston Churchill and George Orwell seem like odd allies in the cause of truth-telling, but Pulitzer Prize finalist Ricks argues that these two one an extrovert politician, the other an introverted writer were twin pillars of the struggle against the totalitarian threats of fascism and communism. They had things in common. Both blurred the line between soldier and journalist, Churchill in the Boer War, Orwell in the Spanish Civil War. Both were superb writers. Both loved England, though Churchill showed his affection by spelling out to the English just how bad things were in the early days of WWII. This grim talk did not dismay the British people. Instead, it braced them, Ricks writes. Orwell, author of Animal Farm and 1984, was the visionary, predicting the rise of the all-seeing state and politicians who masterfully twist the truth. His literary method was to discover the facts and lay them out, Ricks writes. 1984 has sold 50 million copies, with a burst of recent sales to readers grappling with the implications of fake news. The genius of Ricks' method is to tell the story of an ongoing struggle through the lives of two extraordinary men.--Gwinn, Mary Ann Copyright 2017 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A joint biography of two men who "led the way, politically and intellectually, in responding to the twin totalitarian threats of fascism and communism" in the mid-20th century.As dual biographies pour off the presses, authors stretch to find a suitable pair. That includes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ricks (The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, 2012, etc.), who takes an odd tack with subjects who were neither friends, colleagues, rivals, nor enemies. Nonetheless, given the author's abundant skills, readers will thoroughly enjoy the result. Since Churchill and Orwell never met, Ricks writes separate biographies and then works hard to deliver a common theme. He succeeds because these two men made cases for individual freedom better than anyone in their century. During 1940, at a time when everyone agreed that Britain's destruction was imminent, Churchill treated Neville Chamberlain and the appeasers (who were largely responsible) with respect, ordered no mass murders or arrests, and never assumed that, in this crisis and, of course, temporarily, Britain needed a touch of Nazi ruthlessness. Orwell has always been the conservatives' favorite Marxist, although he was a faithful socialist all his life. An obscure journalist until his breakthrough with Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), he hated totalitarianism in all forms but reserved special ire for the cant and fabrication that all governments employ and that his colleagues on the left accepted when it suited their beliefs. Everyone approves of Orwell's classic statement that a lie in the service of a good cause is no less despicable than in the service of a bad cause. Yet it's never caught on; our leaders routinely announce bad news as good news, and plenty of activists consider lying a useful tactic. A superb account of two men who set standards for defending liberal democracy that remain disturbingly out of reach. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Thomas E. Ricks lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife and children.

Print
Save record
ISBD
More searches

Search for this title in:
Euless Public Library Hurst Public Library North Richland Hills Public Library Grapevine Public Library Other Libraries (WorldCat) IMDB