Churchill’s Lives
Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize in Literature for “his mastery of historical and biographical description.” Nowhere is that mastery more evident than in Great Contemporaries (1937).
Written in the decade before Churchill became prime minister, these brilliant portraits of the giants of his age offer wisdom for our own. This brand-new illustrated edition of 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.
With his keen powers of observation and knack for the telling anecdote, Churchill not only traces the character of his subjects but also puts his finger on what makes a man great. To be sure, not all the figures profiled here are equally great, and Churchill finds their limitations at least as revealing as their merits.
This handsome new edition of Great Contemporaries—the first in twenty years—includes five bonus essays that have never appeared in previous versions, more than thirty photographs, and an enlightening introduction and annotations by renowned Churchill scholar James W. Muller. It brings back Churchill’s unmatched insights and unforgettable prose for a new generation of readers and leaders.