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Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age | 
 enlarge | Author: Arthur Herman
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 11496
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 736
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.6
ISBN: 0553804634
Dewey Decimal Number: 325.54094109041
EAN: 9780553804638
ASIN: 0553804634
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: IT IS A BRAND NEW BOOK BUT OUT OF SHRINKWRAP,'BOOK CLUB EDITION',UNREAD,UNOPENED,SHIPS WITH DELIVERY CONFIRMATION,BUY WITH CONFIDENCE,THANKS
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Product Description
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, would become 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
Interesting for another reason August 3, 2008
Most people will read "Gandhi and Churchill" for the author's detailed study of how the two men compared and contrasted with each other. Remember the exam papers that asked you to compare and contrast two historical periods or two--whatever? Arthur Herman uses the compare and contrast framework to anchor his view that under the skin, Gandhi and Churchill were more alike than you would expect if you put the skinny, bare-chested man and his rotund, English-dressed adversary side by side. Both men were products of the Victorian Age. Both highly esteemed the "manly" virtues. Both were ruthless on occasion. And both, more often than we like to think, could be wrong, even disastrously wrong. To add to the mix, both men's lives had a series of successes and failures.
For many decades Gandhi and Churchill (but they were not the only players, as the author makes clear in great detail) struggled over what India was and what India would become. In the end, according to Herman, neither man's vision prevailed.
This is a very critical dual portrait, not easy on either man, and if both emerge, from time to time, as large sized, it is not because the author intends to spare them. On occasionI found myself wrestling with the author's judgments, not completely satisfied with the interpretations, not sure that there isn't more to be said on one side or the other. Interpretive histories can be more or less persuasive, and I found this one very useful, with lots of new information, but--well, we are allowed to reserve judgment. The author seems to suggest that each man, in his own way, scuttled the possibility of a united India containing Hindus and Moslems together, an India emerging without the birth pangs of massacre and attrocity. He almost seems to be saying that absent these men the bloodbaths would have or could have been avoided. Maybe.
However, the book is interesting for another quite unexpected reason: its portrait of what happened in and around India during the Second World War. My guess is most Americans think of WWll in terms of the blitzkreig in Europe, men and machinery trudging in the snow in endless areas of Russia, naval battles in the Pacific, with some fierce island-hopping fighting going on as you got closer to Japan. Sure there was something called "over the hump" and of course Singapore fell, and something should be said about Burma, but that part is hazy. For those not aware how deeply and intimately India and Indian soldiers were involved in the war, this book is something of a revelation. For that reason alone some readers might well want to pick up the book quite aside from the book's two-peas-in-a-pod argument.
 "An Epic That Must Be Read" August 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age", Arthur Herman, Bantam Books, NY 2008. ISBN 978-0-553-80463-8, HC 609/722. Notes 50 pgs., Ref., 12 pgs., Index 34 pgs., Glossary 3 pgs., Dates 3 pgs., 9 " x 6 ". Inveiglements include 35 glossy B/W photos and 3 schema maps of Africa & India.
This detailed, lengthy chronicle, thoughtfully divided into 31 chapters, is brilliantly written in fast-moving style by best-selling author Arthur Herman. It's a narrative journal about two legendary worldly figures - Gandhi and Churchill whose lives and life forces entwined as both struggled relentlessly against one another, ...so much sound and fury wont to evoke primal screams of differing secular humanisms. We learn about their early years, of their accomplices or sidekicks, of their rise in worldly stature via victories and losses, where sophistication can be triumphed by naivety, and where melancholy necessitates time out, and about a blood-bath too frequently skipped over unequalled in history.
We generally think of fiction as attention-getting and if its really good, something hard to put down -- but this is so true of Herman's book, which is basically recent history - much of which most of us likely experienced dispassionately, unless we served overseas in military combat.
Did you ever think reading history could be exciting, that experiencing history as it is written and told is all but invariably propagandized whereby accounts by third parties sounds distantly foreign but can be verified by reliable sources? Well, "Gandhi & Churchill" is a tremendous read and you'll wonder why so much passed you by - you'll discover the personages in detail and understand better why Rommel and British Army were in Africa, of the racial-ethnic caste mix in India, of India's division into Bangledesh, Pakistan and India, locations Japanese invaded India, parental forces which drove Churchill, whether Winston truly drank whiskey in the morning, and if Gandhi enjoyed sex? and what he really died from - and so much, much more.
Author Herman could have written separate books on these two personages, but combining them was grandiose. Do not miss this book!
Great research poor writing August 1, 2008
The information to be gleaned from this book is amazing. I've read many book on Churchill but learned a great deal more from this book.
I did not, however, like the author's writing style: Punctuation anarchy; verbose, and at times preachy. It got in the way of making this an enjoyable read.
The author needs an editor - a good one.
I would recommend the book with the above caveat.
 Too little on So Much July 24, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is a mediocrity at best. An interesting idea that never comes to fruition. The author's understanding of Gandhi is embarrassingly limited. Although, those interested in either men will find stories perhaps untold in existing history books or biographies. There is the seed of a great idea here but would require at least two volumes to get it adequately. Author seems to be fighting imaginary war with "those" biographers of Gandhi who shamelessly idealize the Mahatma. Judith Brown's ghastly and unreadable account seems to be given a pass here as the author mentions her name ad nauseam. Evidently this new version by Herman is the correct one. It is inevitable that some idealization of Gandhi's character will have occurred over the last sixty some odd years. Even Churchill's character has become idealized. I do not see how depicting a "warts and all" picture of Gandhi helps anyone. And besides, there is something immodest and unsightly about stripping the clothes off the dead, especially when it comes to Gandhi, who wore so few. An above average study of Gandhi will reveal a man who never hid his faults anyway. The idea of writing a "parallel lives" of brandy-sniffing Churchill and wheel-spinning Gandhi, while being pleasant if not downright cute, is somehow parochial. But what the hell, it's a great marketing pitch.A really thorough history of the British Empire in those years with particular emphasis on India (or vice versa) would be more interesting. Best bet: Spend an hour skimming this book in your Public Library.
 A Study in Intransigence July 15, 2008
Actually we have heard it all before how a brilliant and successful Indian lawyer who practiced as a barrister in London's Inns of Court, and in South Africa took on the British establishment in India, and how a scion of an aristocratic family both in and out of office opposed any logical attempt, or even discussion, of disestablishment.
Author, Arthur Herman, in his recently published GANDHI AND CHURCHILL brilliantly portrays the parallel lives (Gandhi was 5 years older then Churchill) and points up that they were more alike than different. They both served with distinction in the Boer War one as a journalist and one as an non-combatant and both were proud to be members of the British Imperial family. Gandhi believed that Britain's mission was to eventually grant independence to his home land, as a dominion or something similar. Churchill believed that something could be worked out but not in his life time. All this changed as a result of the massacre at Amritsar in 1919 where the occupying power overreached itself and turned Gandhi into a dedicated separatist. From 1920 onwards under the auspices of benign and often well meaning viceroys and promptings from London opportunities for a reasoned long term planning were lost because of the stubborness and intransigence of both men. Then add to the mix Nehru, father and son and the austere Moslem, Jinnah. Gandhi and Churchill met only once and exchanged correspondence once. The sub-continent of India could have remained one country if a plan had been followed but world events had taken precedence and the final transfer of power was made with precipitous haste.
We recommend this well-researched joint biography of an imperialist and war leader, and the martyred nationalist who created the new political movement of civil disobedience
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