Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill : A Brief Account of a Long Life

Rating:
Summary: A shallow faux biography
Review: Tucked into the Select Bibliography on p. 284 is a telling detail, a confession by the author that "Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill rests on the work of more comprehensive biographers." A more honest book would have included this key piece of information up front. The author is neither a biographer nor a Churchill scholar, but someone who combines her reading of other people's work with the not-very-earth-shattering (and by the end of the book tiresome) idea that a life can be seen from a variety of perspectives, and Churchill was a complex and sometimes contradictory figure. Rubin comes across as a dilettante (complete with a self-promoting website, duly noted on the dust jacket). All in all, an irritating book.

Rating:
Summary: Forty Ways--all wheat and no chaff
Review: We Churchill-o-files are used to voluminous works by and about Mr. Churchill, and I was looking forward to a more concise treatise on this complex man. However, Ms. Rubin's book was so engrossingly entertaining and informative that I found myself lamenting its relative brevity. The author has done the "heavy lifting" in compiling many little-known facts about one of the greatest statesmen of all time. Her personal insights, formed from what was an obviously extensively researched data base, were invaluable in helping me to understand the private side of this great leader.