Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20470 in Books
• Published on: 1983-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 973 pages

Customer Reviews

This is the real thing
There are many good biographies out there, but a great one is rare. This is one of the great ones; William Manchester has taken the art of biography to a new level. Most biographies are merely "interesting," rarely making any effort to give the reader a sense of what it would have been like to be or know the subject. Manchester does just that. Rather than write a narrative story of Winston Churchill's life, he has chosen instead to give us a rich tapestry of Chrchill's life as it was woven. Many biographers are simply idolizers of their subjects; this is not so with Manchester. He reserves no harsh judgment, just as he reserves no due praise; when he is reporting something negative that Winston did he says it was negative, and explains why.

But The Last Lion is more than just a biography. In attempting to capture the essence of Churchill Manchester has written some of the best material about World War I and the appeasement crisis. It is rare that historical events can be made to feel like the present, but Manchester has done this.

Both volumes of this work are well worth your money, your time, and your attention. Indeed, the only bad part of Manchester's biography is that he will not be able to finish it. It is not known how much of the third volume he was able to put together before Alzheimer's made work impossible for him, but it can be hoped that whatever he was able to do will someday be published, no matter how unpolished it may be.

Churchill or Manchester -- tough choice!
It is hard to tell who is the larger hero -- Churchill or Manchester. Not because the historian is bigger than history, but rather because the historian has so captured history.

Churchill aficionados don't need to read heroic prose to be attracted to all that has been written about him. But for the rest of us, Manchester has strung together the words that truly capture the place Churchill created in world history.

This volume is the first in what was obviously intended as a trilogy. Unfortunately, we have yet to see the concluding book. I hope it makes it.

Here is a challenge. Pick up the book and read the first two pages. You will find yourselve with two major problems. First, about 2000 pages (volumes one and two) of reading that you will want to complete faster than you have time for. Worse, a dull ache of longing for the third volume that may never materialize.

Read both books - Best history/biography ever!
Many lists say the best historical biography is "Disraeli" by Blake. This is better. Way better.

The only author that has ever kept me glued to a book as much as Manchester's is Michael Crichton. It's odd to compare a biography to Jurassic Park, but Manchester makes history come alive. He spends a lot of time and care setting the "culture" in a way that is not pedantic or boring (unlike some Civil War histories I've read!). And then he builds on Churchill's stories in a way that makes you feel like you're in Churchill's shoes, with the same issues and challenges.

Unfortunately, there is no Volume 3 about the war years. Manchester's illness prevented this. What a sad loss to history.

Read Vol 1 and 2. You won't regret it.