With the biographer's rare genius for expressing the essence of extraordinary lives, Massie brings to life a crowd of glittering figures: the single-minded Admiral von Tirpitz; the young, ambitious Winston Churchill; the ruthless, sycophantic Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow; Britain's greatest twentieth-century Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey; and Jacky Fisher, the eccentric admiral who revolutionized the British Navy and brought forth for the first true battleship, H.M.S. Dreadnought. Their story, and the story of the era, filled with misunderstanding, missed opportunities, and events leading to unintended conclusions, unfolds like a Greek tragedy in this powerful narrative. Intimately human and dramatic, Dreadnought is history at its most riveting.
Dreadnought Séries
Cette série plonge dans les rivalités personnelles et nationales qui ont déclenché la première grande course aux armements du XXe siècle. Elle donne vie aux décisions et aux ambitions de personnages clés dont les histoires entrelacées ont façonné une ère turbulente d'incompréhension et d'occasions manquées. Le récit se déroule comme une tragédie moderne, capturant à la fois le drame humain intime et la grande ampleur historique. Elle offre une exploration captivante d'un moment charnière de l'histoire, racontée avec un portrait historique magistral et un grand sens narratif.
Ordre de lecture recommandé
Castles of Steel
Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea
- 880pages
- 31 heures de lecture
In August 1914 the two greatest navies in the world confronted each other across the North Sea. At first there were skirmishes, then battles off the coasts of England and Germany and in the far corners of the world, including the Falklands. The British attempted to force the Dardanelles with battleships - which led to the Gallipoli catastrophe. As the stalemate on the ground on the Western Front continued, the German Navy released a last strike against the British 'ring of steel'. The result was Jutland, a titanic and brutal battle between dreadnoughts. The knowledge, understanding and literary power Robert K. Massie brings to this story is unparalleled. There will never again be a war like this in which seagoing monsters hurl shells at each other until one side is destroyed. The story is driven by some of the most dramatically intriguing personalities in history: Churchill and Jacky Fisher, Jellicoe and Beatty. And then there were the powerful Germans - von Pohl, Scheer, Hipper, and the grand old fork-bearded genius Tirpitz. Castles of Steel is a book about leadership and command, bravery and timidity, genius and folly, qualities which are of course displayed magnificently by Robert K. Massie's literary mastery.