Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age
Author: Arthur Herman
In this fascinating and meticulously researched book, bestselling historian Arthur Herman sheds new light on two of the most universally recognizable icons of the twentieth century, and reveals how their forty-year rivalry sealed the fate of India and the British Empire.
They were born worlds apart: Winston Churchill to Britain’s most glamorous aristocratic family, Mohandas Gandhi to a pious middle-class household in a provincial town in India. Yet Arthur Herman reveals how their lives and careers became intertwined as the twentieth century unfolded. Both men would go on to lead their nations through harrowing trials and two world wars—and become locked in a fierce contest of wills that would decide the fate of countries, continents, and ultimately an empire.
Gandhi & Churchill reveals how both men were more alike than different, and yet became bitter enemies over the future of India, a land of 250 million people with 147 languages and dialects and 15 distinct religions—the jewel in the crown of Britain’s overseas empire for 200 years.
Over the course of a long career, Churchill would do whatever was necessary to ensure that India remain British—including a fateful redrawing of the entire map of the Middle East and even risking his alliance with the United States during World War Two.
Mohandas Gandhi, by contrast, would dedicate his life to India’s liberation, defy death and imprisonment, and create an entirely new kind of political movement: satyagraha, or civil disobedience. His campaigns of nonviolence in defiance of Churchill and the British, including his famous Salt March, wouldbecome the blueprint not only for the independence of India but for the civil rights movement in the U.S. and struggles for freedom across the world.
Now master storyteller Arthur Herman cuts through the legends and myths about these two powerful, charismatic figures and reveals their flaws as well as their strengths. The result is a sweeping epic of empire and insurrection, war and political intrigue, with a fascinating supporting cast, including General Kitchener, Rabindranath Tagore, Franklin Roosevelt, Lord Mountbatten, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. It is also a brilliant narrative parable of two men whose great successes were always haunted by personal failure, and whose final moments of triumph were overshadowed by the loss of what they held most dear.
The Washington Post - Edwin M. Yoder Jr.
Herman's book focuses on two imposing figures who epitomized the clash between traditional imperialism and the gathering anti-colonial insurgency, and he tells their stories stylishly and eloquently…he has probed beneath the stereotypes to show that Gandhi, like Churchill, was an unpredictable maverick and that Churchill's doubts sprang from genuine worry that an independent India could be ripped apart by the communal stresses of her countless sects, castes, languages and regions.
Publishers Weekly
Historian Herman (How the Scots Invented the Modern World) paints a forceful portrait of the emergence of the postcolonial era in the fateful contrast-and surprising affinities-between two historic figures on opposite sides of the struggle for Indian independence. Churchill and Gandhi, both elites in their respective milieus, began their careers with remarkably similar perspectives and trod intersecting paths across India, South Africa and England. They shared an obsession with physical courage (albeit channeled in different ways) that tied conceptions of masculinity to larger ideas of racial identity and moral superiority-and India loomed large in their triumphal careers, ultimately frustrating both men's idealism. While Herman's dual biography artfully depicts the personalities of the two men, he gives short shrift to the more complex forces of British imperial decline, Indian nationalism and the emergence of the postwar order (for example, Herman helpfully but also too neatly explains the dogged centrality of India and the British raj in Churchill's worldview as an act of filial loyalty to his beloved father) But the author also takes careful account of the constellation of modern and antimodern currents of late Victorian thought in situating these vastly influential figures in a fascinating narrative of their times. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Elizabeth Morris - Library Journal
The complex task of drawing comparison and contrast between two of the most chronicled lives of the 20th century is easily and compellingly handled by Herman (How the Scots Invented the Modern World). Spanning the globe and dozens of decades, Herman never sinks into the clichés of these two men's biographies but rather deconstructs some of the cherished myths surrounding them while maintaining a warm and lively tone. From India to South Africa to London, they seemed to cross paths in life yet could never reach a true understanding of each other. Churchill, the ardent defender of the British Empire, had trouble accepting modern political realities and fixated upon Gandhi as the ultimate threat to his beloved England's legacy. Gandhi, in turn, achieved global superstar status but could not unite Indian politics and eventually became a hindrance, then an irrelevance, to Indian independence. These two men may have been presented historically as enemies, or at least proxy enemies, but Herman brings out the true issues that divided them yet made them remarkably similar holdovers of the Victorian era. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ1/08.]
Kirkus Reviews
Veteran historian Herman (To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, 2004, etc.) offers an ambitious, reasoned joint biography of two great men. Each was a late-Victorian political figure who continued to lead into the mid-20th century. Each held an exemplary vision for his country that initially and spectacularly prevailed, but ultimately collided with new modern realities. Born to a well-to-do Hindu family in the western province of Gujarati, Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) was groomed in the English educational system to be a barrister and spent a formative period studying in London. His first experience of racial discrimination was in South Africa, where he worked for the enfranchisement of indentured servants. Winston Churchill (1874-1965), son of an aristocrat who was briefly secretary of state for India, inherited his father Randolph's unshakeable belief in Britain's imperial mission to the subcontinent. While both Gandhi and Churchill had absorbed the idea of empire as "a moral force, an institution of order and civilization," Gandhi's view would change drastically. He gradually repudiated Britain for its criminal subjugation and tyranny, fashioning a new spiritual creed from his deep philosophical readings, during his many jail stints, of Tolstoy, Ruskin and the Bhagavad Gita. Churchill rejected Gandhi's brand of religious "fanaticism," which he believed threatened to engulf the civilized Christian world in paganism and darkness. When Gandhi returned to India and joined national politics, he developed his belief in ahimsa (nonviolence) to embrace methods of satyagraha (passive resistance) in order to challenge the Raj's paternalistic, restrictive policies.Churchill opposed him at every step, passionately rejecting, for example, Viceroy Lord Irwin's advocacy of dominion status for India in 1929. Herman's measured portrait of each man conveys his entire worldview, shaped by class, history and education. Each proved great and flawed in different ways. A well-wrought historical narrative that adds significantly to our understanding of both figures. Agent: Glen Hartley/Writers' Representatives
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They Must Be Stopped
Author: Brigitte Gabriel
They Must Be Stopped is New York Times bestselling author Brigitte Gabriel’s warning to the world: We can no longer ignore the growth of radical Islam--we must act soon, and powerfully. Gabriel challenges our western and politically-correct notions about Islam, demonstrating why radical Islam is so deadly and how we can halt its progress.
Brigitte Gabriel speaks her mind:
*Fundamentalist Islam is a religion rooted in 7th century teachings that are fundamentally opposed to democracy and equality.
*Radical Islamists are utterly contemptuous of all “infidels” (non-Muslims) and regard them as enemies worthy of death.
*Madrassas in America are increasing in number, and they are just one part of a growing radical Islamic army on US soil.
*Radical Islam exploits the US legal system and America’s protection of religion to spread its hatred for western values.
*America must organize a unified voice that says “enough” to political correctness, and demands that government officials and elected representatives do whatever is necessary to protect us.
Brigitte Gabriel has fearlessly faced down critics, death threats, and political correctness, and is one of the most sought after terrorism experts in the world. They Must Be Stopped is her clarion call to action. Gabriel thoroughly addresses the historical and religious basis of radical Islam, its frightening encroachment into societies around the world, and its abuses of democracy in the name of religion.
Table of Contents:
1 Islam 101 : the East through Western eyes 13
2 Islamic terrorism : then and now 27
3 Purists drink their Islam straight 50
4 The Muslim Brotherhood "project" for North America 73
5 Madrassas in America and abroad 88
6 Reviving the caliphate : one world nation under Allah; supersizing the Muslim world 116
7 The Islamization of Europe 129
8 The subtle Islamization agenda : boiling the West alive 150
9 Islam's contempt for women and minorities 170
10 Tolerance : a one-way street 190
11 Rising in defense of democracy 204
12 Winning the war on Islamofascism : strategies and tactics 223
A note of thanks 237
Acknowledgments 239
Notes 241
Index 267
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