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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 325.54094109041
EAN: 9780553804638
ISBN: 0553804634
Label: Bantam
Manufacturer: Bantam
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 736
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Publisher: Bantam
Release Date: April 29, 2008
Studio: Bantam

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Editorial Review:

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.




Rating: - Walking contradiction partly truth and partly fiction
This book changed my image of both men. I belive it removed the polish and made them human. Their strength was in the fact that both men could fall so far down and climb back to the top over and over again.

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Rating: - Explains so much of what is going on in the world even today
This is a critical history book in explaining not just the past but casting light on present conflicts in different regions in the world. From the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, to the war in Iraq, "Churchill and Gandhi" will help readers gain additional insights. Churchill is arguably the most important individual who shaped events in the British empire. Gandhi is a figure who is widely respected perhaps more so in the west than India. Obama names Gandhi along with Lincoln and MLK as his favorite ... Read More

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Rating: - Churchill, the racist and imperialist and Gadhi, the humanist
I know that Churchill has been voted the man of century (20th century) and the savior of western civilization. All this may be true but it is also true-and this book confirms it-that he was a racist and an imperialist of the first order. He did not think that the oriental races,as he called them, were capable of self-governance. His attitude seems somewhat similar to American slave owners. The author tries to draw parallels between lives and goals of Churchill and Gandhi. Parallels that do not always work. ... Read More

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Rating: - Herman's whitewashing of the British record on famine
Ignore my rating--I didn't want to rate the entire book, but comment on one aspect of it that bothered me--the astonishingly benign attitude the author displays towards the record of famine under British rule during the late 1800's. That, of course, is not the subject of the book, but he does touch on it as he must.

First, I am comparing Herman's account to that of Mike Davis in "Late Victorian Holocausts". Davis paints a convincing and harrowing portrait of British callousness and blind adherence ... Read More

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Rating: - Good on facts but poor on repercussions
This is a fascinating account of the relationship between India and Britain for the first half of the twentieth century through the lives of these two countries greatest men. However, it failed to hit the mark in terms of truly explaining Gandhi's role in India's independence and on Indian psyche and also Churchill's imperialist legacy in our modern world.

The author has certainly done a good job in reconstructing the trials and tribulations of both men. He has proved without doubt that these men were ... Read More

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