Customer Reviews

The Great Republic (Random House Large Print)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a wonderful book on the Greatest Country of the century by the Greatest Man of the Century. I really enjoyed this book as it gave me an in depth account in one volume of the struggles and conflicts Americans had to go through to get to where they are today.

The Great Republic is essentially Churchill's historical overview of America contained within his History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Normally acknowledged as one of the great political statesman of his, perhaps any, age, Churchill was also quite the historian. His complete works span over 50 volumes of material. These excerpts of his larger work provide us with a unique perspective on American history from an alternative vantage point, although not entirely foreign. Churchill was, in fact, intimately connected with Amercia. As the introduction provided by his grandson (appropriately named) Winston S. Churchill reveals, three of Churchill's ancestors were actually passengers on the Mayflower. He had even more recent connections through his mother who was an American. Churchill was a great admirer of what he affectionately called 'the Great Republic' (thus, the title), and so his endearment of our country is also the result of embracing his own heritage.

Only half of this edition is taken from Churchill's original history. Obviously, the work has a Euro-centrist perspective of America and its events. But this is part of its unique charm, added with the fact of the man who had written it is highly regarded world-wide. The span of history covered begins with the Europlean effort to find alternative routes to the East Indies, resulting in America's discovery. It ends at the beginning of the twentieth century having little to say of these times. Because American history was not the focus of the original work, much history must be expected by the reader to be left out. The themes discussed are almost entirely political, as one would expect. The central focus of our history it turns out is our Civil War. It seems that it is not only historians in America who have such a fascination with this epic. More emphasis is given this historic confrontation than that of our Revolutionary War (after all, what Englishman would glory in that story). Nevertheless, the greatness of Churchill as an historian is fully evident here.

The latter half is a collection of Churchill's writings and speeches regarding America covering a span of over 50 years. Here we find how America was viewed by the prominent politian. He is certainly credible enough to have formed an opinion of our American customs and habits considering his background and his numerous trips to the New World. The topics vary covering our eating habits and social customs to our landscapes to our common language and heritage to opinoins on Prohibition and War. These, or course, act as a history of America in the first half of this last century. On the whole, The Great Republic is an exceptional and brief read in American history.

The best part of the audio was the telling of The Revolutionary War from the losers without bitterness but with humor. The coming together of the United States & Britain was excellent. Great Britain, at the end of the 19th century was the greatest power on earth yet had no alliances with any major power. It really didn"t take long for the two most powerful English speaking nations in the world to warm to each other. It is an important subject that has not been covered entensively in American History books.

This excerpted work is a light summary of American History from the perspective of a good friend and ally. It is not, however, a book that would have been taken seriously had it not been written by Churchill. To students of U.S. history, it will seem too superficial in most places (eg. Industrialization), too romantic in others (eg. the Civil War), and downright misleading in still others (imagine anyone describing Jefferson as 'frugal'!!). Having said all that, I enjoyed it precisely because it is our cousin's celebration of his own American roots.

I couldn't bear to listen to this audio book for more than 15 minutes before I put it away for good. Winston Churchill's grandson appears to be unable to read complex sentences out loud. He ends sentences where commas occur, only to continue in suprise that there is more to read. His introduction is also incredibly pompus.

It is Churchill's grandson, not Churchill himself reading this. Dreadful sing-song whiney voice. I couldn't get past the first side of tape 1 because of it.

This book looked promising but I'm sorry to say that I have not gone past the first few pages.

Churchill's writing style is very dry (no matter what they say) and his sentences about historical events are full of summaries and platitudes. I'm not sure where he gets his facts from. If one doesn't have the facts, one could at least have an opinion and be funny about it. Churchill is neither.

I bought it thinking it would be a good introduction to American history written by a great man (I am still a fan of his speeches), but this is not the right book. I don't know why it even got published - its edited form should already have given me a clue that the whole unabridged work was unreadable.

This book provides a fairly natural factual overview of American History from Colonization to Industrialization. However, cramming American History into a 300 page book is not an easy task, so significant details have been omitted (perhaps too many).

The Great Republic is not as academic as some of Sir Churchill's other work (History of the English Speaking People, The Second World War, etc.), but it provides a good introduction to Churchills's writing style and rigor. At times, the book feels rushed and patched, but this is a cause of its nature (collection of parts of essays) and its length.

This book will definitely appeal to the National Pride in every American. However, I was a bit disappointed that Sir Churchill tended to expose only positive aspects of our history and decided to ignore negative aspects (e.g.: Injustices suffered by Natives Americans during Colonalization, Atrocities of Slavery, Early Refusal to join WWII, etc.). The negative turns of our history are as much a part of where we are today as the positive turns.

To conclude, I am not convinced that Sir Churchill would be extremely content as a Historian with this book; but it nevertheless provides a good 6 hours worth of facts about American History. A good refresher for most people, but I would not recommend this book as the only book to read on American History because it lacks breadth, depth, and perspective.