Sir Winston S. Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values."
Over a 64-year span, Churchill published over 40 books, many multi-volume definitive accounts of historical events to which he was a witness and participant. All are beautifully written and as accessible and relevant today as when first published.
During his fifty-year political career, Churchill served twice as Prime Minister in addition to other prominent positions—including President of the Board of Trade, First Lord of the Admiralty, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Home Secretary. In the 1930s, Churchill was one of the first to recognize the danger of the rising Nazi power in Germany and to campaign for rearmament in Britain. His leadership and inspired broadcasts and speeches during World War II helped strengthen British resistance to Adolf Hitler—and played an important part in the Allies’ eventual triumph.
One of the most inspiring wartime leaders of modern history, Churchill was also an orator, a historian, a journalist, and an artist. All of these aspects of Churchill are fully represented in this collection of his works.
Churchill Sizes Up the Giants of His Age, Offers Wisdom for Our OwnWinston Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on the strength of "his mastery of historical and biographical description." Nowhere is that mastery more evident than in Great Contemporaries (1937), which features Churchill’s brief lives of those he called "Great Men of our age."Great Contemporaries profiles towering figures ranging from Franklin Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Lawrence of Arabia, and Leon Trotsky to Charlie Chaplin, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw. This edition includes five essays that have never appeared in any previous version, some thirty black-and-white photographs, and an enlightening introduction and annotations by noted Churchill scholar James W. Muller.Written in the decade before Churchill became prime minister, the essays in Great Contemporaries focus on the challenges of statecraft at a time when the democratic revolution was toppling older regimes based on tradition and aristocratic privilege. Churchill’s keen observations take on new importance in our own age of roiling political change.Ultimately, Great Contemporaries provides fascinating insight into the statesman’s perspective. Churchill’s objective is clear: he tries to learn from these giants in order to discover what makes a man great. He approaches his subjects with a measuring eye, finding their limitations at least as revealing as their merits.
The period from 1940 to 1941 was a difficult one for Britain-and for Churchill-during the War. Faced with military setbacks abroad and growing criticism from the public and the government at home, Churchill gave some of his most effective speeches during this time-ultimately hardening British resolve against Hitler.This collection contains seventy-two broadcasts, speeches, and messages to Parliament displaying Churchill's enormous fortitude in the face of personal and political challenge. This volume sold over 30,000 copies in the UK and more than 20,000 in North America-offering insights into the human spirit as relevant today as they were in their time.
This second volume in Churchill's five-volume series The World Crisis is by far the most personal-dealing frankly with Churchill's failures as a military leader and his ultimately unsuccessful battle to break the European deadlock. After the disastrous Gallipoli landings on the Dardanelles, Winston Churchill served for several months as commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. During this time, he served on one of the most violent stretches of the front lines, making a total of 36 courageous expeditions into No Man's Land. Here, Churchill provides an unflinching narrative of a particularly challenging time in World War I and in his own career-providing fascinating insight into the mental and psychological challenges faced by a major historical leader.
