Customer Reviews

Frederick the Great: A Life in Deed and Letters

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2 star:		(1)
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At times criticized and commended for its focus on merely Frederick, rather than Frederick the Great, MacDonogh's effort merits the attention of amateurs and enthusiasts alike. In a relatively brief space, MacDonogh is able to reveal a great deal of primary insight about a man who distinguished himself not only with the sword, but also a pen, a flute, etc. MacDonogh also demonstrates his ability to use the personalities to illustrate the time; weaving a thread through the German principalities of Frederick's youth is difficult enough without the need to discuss the circumstances of Frederick, his father and the machinations of foreign and Prussian envoys and courtiers. MacDonogh has given us an insightful piece about a man who lived a life full of something for everyone.

In a society stuffed with anglophiles and, more recently, celticphiles, we have little history available on Middle Europe and its grandeur. We know that it produced the most terrible army of the 20th Century. We also know of colorful snippets about how 18th Century German mercenaries lent a hand in Britain's fruitless effort to keep 13 American colonies from becoming an indepent nation.

The book gives a much deserved look at how Middle Europe's nations evolved through marriage, annexing and (naturlich) war. Frederick is taken off of his pedestal for us to take a closer look, and the authors shows us Frederick's warts and all. His family, especially his father, plays a vitol role in the book, which the author infers that this is a key element in driving Frederick to succeed.

If there is a shortcoming in the book, it would be the battles. Though the book was not published to be a historical guide on tactics and strategics, I would like to know more on how the protagonist became so land rich at Prussia's zenith.

Wow, this is the kind of popular history that one likes to find, for it is an easily read, quite original and highly entertaining piece of work. Most treatments of important historical figures are, of necessity, heavily-laden with names, dates, geography, and the minutiae of day to day and month to month activities. This is, after all, what a history is meant to be: An accurate recording of the events described. Most pleasure-readers want a lively, entertaining read that is also factually accurate. Unfortunately, an accurate history almost requires all of the relevant details. On the other hand, by including all of the detail the lively and entertaining parts are left out of the equation. (A marvelous exception to this rule is Robert Caro's singular and unrivaled biography of LBJ which, by the way, is still uncompleted three volumes and twenty years later).
Giles MacDonogh has crafted a solution by focusing on Frederick's social and intellectual life. Essentially this is a kind of monograph in which the machinations of the war campaigns, for instance, are summed up in a few lines or a paragraph rather than parsed in painful, niggling detail in mind-numbing liturgical fashion. Likewise, many important characters in Frederick's life are glossed over or mentioned in passing (with the exception of a fine exposition of his father's life, and a rather hilarious on-going description of the decades-long sometimes charming sometimes brutal battle of wills between Voltaire and Frederick). The unspoken premise is a familiarity with Frederick the Great. MacDonogh's mission is to uncover aspects of Frederick's character -those things that went into making him great- that weren't fully developed in other treatments of the man, so be prepared to read another to get one's fill of mind-numbing tactical data and a full calender of events and daily briefings. We find the essence of the man through an examination of the ideas that motivated him, a reasonable explanation of how they were inculcated and developed and how they were applied. It is, if you will, a pointillist portrait done in broad brush strokes.
Although you will likely come away from this book marveling at the genius of Frederick, the book suffers from not having at least a couple of maps to enable one to picture the puzzle-piece character of Frederick's home geography (one also wishes for more pictures of the players in Frederick's life, 16 pps. of pictures is just not enough). Also it doesn't supply quite enough for war campaign material for one to fully apprehend the awesome strategist that Frederick undoubtedly was (perhaps the author expects that this follows logically from a look at the man himself). It would also help to have a working knowledge of written French because the book is liberally sprinkled with lines in the French. The author seems to go out of his way to use obscure words so that one will frequently consult a dictionary. Funny enough because of the author's odd word choice I found myself looking up words that while completely familiar were still surprisingly ill-defined in my mental dictionary. I genuinely learned some new words and came to appreciate others which I believed I already knew. The biggest complaint I have is that the author expresses far too much interest in Frederick's sex life. Admittedly Voltaire's numerous scurrilous allegations against Frederick make for entertaining reading, but it seems that the author worries the issue like a small dog on a large bone.
My complaints are small-beer when compared to the list of very interesting details included one finds fascinating but would never have thought to wonder about. Frederick's taste in music, food, architecture, literature and philosophers, for instance: An overview of Frederick's views on the economy, law, education, agriculture and manufactory: Immersion in the life of Frederick's mind and numerous examples of his sharp, incisive wit and rather deep observations about people and culture. Finally, the author does a brilliant job of bringing various lines of poetry to life with his translations of material issuing from Frederick, Voltaire, and a slew of people within Frederick's orbit. This couldn't have been accomplished by anybody but a person with a flair for language and literature. This engaging read is sure to bring a good few hours of pleasurable reading.

After reading this book, I still didn't know why Frederick II of Prussia had been accorded the title "the Great" by history. This volume spends a lot of time on detailing the personal life of a very flawed man, and very little explaining why he was a seminal force in 18th century politics. I finally turned to his entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which in a short article did a better job of explaining Frederick's place in history than this book did.

Other flaws in this book: for those of us not familiar with 18th century European political geography, a map or two would have been helpful; without maps, it's impossible to understand Frederick's political machinations or (especially) his military campaigns. Also, incredibly, among the pictures there is not a single one of Frederick's queen!

I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was a great introduction to this important figure in European history.

Frederick the Great A Life in Deeds and Letters was not my first choice, but amazon doesn't have a lot to offer on der Alte Fritz. I found in it about a three star biography with some very neat details.

My main problem with the book was due to the printing of the book itself. The text was very thin and weak, rather than crisp and black,and in retrospect, I'm amazed I was able to deal with it and read the book entirely. The other problem with the printers is that the book has none of the pictures maps or diagrams, as someone else mentioned, that are cited in the book. Another minor problem I had was the way the author used all kinds of archaic obsolete terms for wine and booze that I didn't need to know about, but that made me scour the internet to understand what he was talking about. This was due to his personal interest in Wine, which in my opinion had little place in this biography.

It's a pretty heavy book due to its thick high quality pages, but it's upsetting that the typeface had to look so terrible. This is one I would've read again if the print didn't look so terrible.

If the print looked better it would have gotten 4 stars from me. MacDonogh found some really interesting stories and vignettes to place into the narrative of his life that truly kept me turning the pages. If you don't mind low quality typeface that can be irritating, I'd say go for it.

Also, kudos to MacDonogh for not shying away from Frederick's sexuality. It's irritating and cowardly when authors do a disservice to him by not mentioning his nontraditional preference, a problem that I'm encountering with a biography on the Baron von Steuben.

I enjoyed this book, but I've purchased it twice and, despite the list of illustrations in the front, there isn't one picture in the book. I would love it if I could find a copy that was printed with the pictures.