Churchill or Sweet Land of Liberty

Churchill: A Life

Author: Martin Gilbert

About the Author

Martin Gilbert is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He is well known as the official biographer of Churchill, and as a chronicler of the Holocaust and of Jewish history. He was knighted in 1995.

Publishers Weekly

Author of an eight-volume official biography of Winston Churchill, Gilbert here distills his vast knowledge into a lucid, comprehensive and authoritative life of the man considered by many to have been the outstanding public figure of the 20th century. Photos. (Oct.)

Booknews

In 1988, British historian Gilbert completed the eighth and final volume of the official biography of Churchill (1874-1965). Now, drawing on his 25 years of research and his privileged access to Churchill's personal, political, and secret archives, he presents a single-volume biography of the great statesman that melds the hard facts of the public life and the intimate details of the private man. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

What People Are Saying

Taylor
A stupendous book. He has told the truth.

Margaret Thatcher
One of the greatest histories of our time.

Table of Contents:

	Illustrations	ix
	List of Maps	xv
	Preface	xvii
	Acknowledgements	xxi
1	Childhood	1
2	Harrow	19
3	Towards the Army	35
4	Second Lieutenant	51
5	In Action	75
6	To Omdurman and beyond	85
7	South Africa: Adventure, Capture, Escape	107
8	Into Parliament	133
9	Revolt and Responsibilities	167
10	The Social Field	193
11	Home Secretary	211
12	At the Admiralty	239
13	The Coming of War in 1914	263
14	War	277
15	Isolation and Escape	309
16	In the Trenches	331
17	'Deep and Ceaseless Torments'	361
18	Minister of Munitions	375
19	At the War Office	403
20	Colonial Secretary	431
21	Return to the Wilderness	455
22	At the Exchequer	467
23	Out of Office	491
24	The Moment of Truth	535
25	No Place for Churchill	571
26	From Munich to War	603
27	Return to the Admiralty	623
28	Prime Minister	645
29	Britain at Bay	679
30	The Widening War	701
31	Planning for Victory	735
32	Illness and Recovery	763
33	Normandy and Beyond	777
34	War and Diplomacy	803
35	'Advance, Britannia!'	829
36	'An Iron Curtain'	843
37	Mapping the Past, Guiding the Future	871
38	Prime Minister in Peacetime	899
39	Recovery, Last Ambition, Resignation	915
40	Last Years	943
	Maps	961
	Index	983

Books about: Versailles or Faith and Politics

Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North

Author: Thomas J Sugru

The struggle for racial equality in the North has been a footnote in most books about civil rights in America. Now this monumental new work from one of the most brilliant historians of his generation sets the record straight. Sweet Land of Liberty is an epic, revelatory account of the abiding quest for justice in states from Illinois to New York, and of how the intense northern struggle differed from and was inspired by the fight down South.

Thomas Sugrue’s panoramic view sweeps from the 1920s to the present–more than eighty of the most decisive years in American history. He uncovers the forgotten stories of battles to open up lunch counters, beaches, and movie theaters in the North; the untold history of struggles against Jim Crow schools in northern towns; the dramatic story of racial conflict in northern cities and suburbs; and the long and tangled histories of integration and black power.

Appearing throughout these tumultuous tales of bigotry and resistance are the people who propelled progress, such as Anna Arnold Hedgeman, a dedicated churchwoman who in the 1930s became both a member of New York’s black elite and an increasingly radical activist; A. Philip Randolph, who as America teetered on the brink of World War II dared to threaten FDR with a march on Washington to protest discrimination–and got the Fair Employment Practices Committee (“the second Emancipation Proclamation”) as a result; Morris Milgram, a white activist who built the Concord Park housing development, the interracial answer to white Levittown; and Herman Ferguson, a mild-mannered New York teacher whose protest of a Queens construction site led him tobecome a key player in the militant Malcolm X’s movement.

Filled with unforgettable characters and riveting incidents, and making use of information and accounts both public and private, such as the writings of obscure African American journalists and the records of civil rights and black power groups, Sweet Land of Liberty creates an indelible history. Thomas Sugrue has written a narrative bound to become the standard source on this essential subject.

Publishers Weekly

According to Sugrue (The Origins of the Urban Crises), most histories of the civil rights movement "focus on the South and the epic battles between nonviolent protestors and the defenders of Jim Crow during the 1950s and 1960s." The author's groundbreaking account covers a wider time frame and turns the focus northward to "the states with the largest black populations outside the south." Sugrue highlights seminal people, books and organizations in his tightly focused study that restores many largely forgotten Northern activists as integral participants in the civil rights movement-such as Philadelphia pastor Leon Sullivan; Roxanne Jones of the "welfare rights movement" and first black woman elected to the Pennsylvania State Senate; and James Forman, advocate for reparations. The National Negro Congress, the Revolutionary Action Movement and the National Black Political Convention share history with the NAACP and the Urban League, as Sugrue traces the phoenixlike risings from the ashes of old organizations into new. Dense with "boycotts, pickets, agitation, riots, lobbying, litigation, and legislation," the book is heavily detailed but consistently readable with unparalleled scope and fresh focus. (Nov.)

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Thomas J. Davis - Library Journal

The commonplace focus on the Civil Rights Movement as a morality play set in the 1950s and 1960s South neglects the North as a crucial battleground in the struggle for racial equality, argues Bancroft Prize-winning University of Pennsylvania historian Sugrue (The Origins of the Urban Crisis). In his three-part, 14-chapter narrative, he shows that black exclusion, poverty, and racial violence permeated America on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. Focusing on an array of individual activists and grassroots organizations that collectively advanced equality in the states having the largest black populations outside the South from the 1920s through the Great Migration and on, Sugrue produces a political history with strong socioeconomic themes, weaving together local, national, and international developments. And he carries his analysis into the so-called post-civil rights era since the 1980s. Diagramming the dimensions of the continuing black crisis, he plumbs fragile gains and deepening racial divides. This splendid read brims with insights broadening and deepening understanding of the black-white mold of modern America. Highly recommended and essential for collections on U.S. history, social movements, race relations, or civil rights.