Julian Jackson is Professor of History, Emeritus, at Queen Mary University of London and one of the foremost experts on twentieth-century France. His De Gaulle won the Duff Cooper Prize and Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, among other awards, and was a New Yorker, Financial Times, Spectator, Times, and Telegraph Book of the Year. His previous books include France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and The Fall of France, which won the Wolfson History Prize. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, Commandeur de l’Ordre des Palmes académiques, and Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Everyone should read [this] whether they can remember the events
concerned or not. It is a remarkable book in which the man widely
chosen as the Greatest Frenchman is dissected, intelligently and
lucidly, then put together again in an extraordinary fair-minded,
highly readable portrait. Throughout, the book tells a thrilling
story.
*New Statesman*
Charles de Gaulle was among the most extraordinary visionaries of
the 20th century… Jackson’s new biography makes awesome reading,
and is a tribute to the fascination of its subject, and to
Jackson’s mastery of it… A triumph, and hugely readable.
*Sunday Times*
Jackson sets out to demythologize the General without debunking
him. With a fluent style and near-total command of existing and
newly available sources, he peers behind the monolithic façade to
unmask a composite of opposing traits…In crafting the finest
one-volume life of de Gaulle in English, Julian Jackson has come
closer than anyone before him to demystifying this conservative at
war with the status quo, for whom national interests were
inseparable from personal honor and ‘a certain idea of France.’
*Wall Street Journal*
Julian Jackson’s biography is a worthy monument to this
extraordinary figure. He has a good eye for the telling quotation
and a magnificent capacity to place de Gaulle, one of the most
fascinating subjects in twentieth-century politics, in his
historical and political setting. The result is a wonderful history
of modern France disguised as the biography of a statesman.
*New York Review of Books*
A sweeping-yet-concise introduction to the most brilliant,
infuriating, and ineffably French of men.
*New York Times*
Classically composed and authoritative…Jackson does a brilliant job
detailing the evolution of de Gaulle from a normal French officer
who has contempt for the squabbling, mediocre politicians of the
Third Republic into a clear voice for republicanism…Jackson writes
wonderful political history.
*New Yorker*
De Gaulle remains France’s most important political figure since
Napoleon…A judicious, authoritative, lucid, and engaging
portrait…De Gaulle will likely remain the standard biography for
many years to come.
*The Nation*
Impressive. [Jackson is] always thorough but never pedantic, always
clarifying but never simplifying, and he deploys an enormous amount
of research with a consistently light touch and a dry wit his
illustrious subject might have appreciated…Charles de Gaulle has
been extremely well-served by this big and judiciously blunt new
biography. The de Gaulle myth will doubtless continue to grow...but
de Gaulle the man is painted perfectly in these pages.
*Christian Science Monitor*
A masterly study of Charles de Gaulle, the most formidable man to
govern his country since Napoleon, that leaves not a scintilla of
doubt about his greatness.
*Sunday Times*
It leaves previous works entirely in the shade, largely because of
its impeccable research and a rare objectivity and empathy…[A]
masterpiece.
*The Spectator*
A gripping and insightful account of the man who was at the heart
of all the main events of French (and therefore European) history
in the twentieth century.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Shows the art of historical biography alive and well, reminding us
that memories of war and fierce patriotism could also be a
constructive force in the remaking of postwar Europe.
*New Statesman*
This superb biography of the former French leader brilliantly
explores how he managed to dominate his country’s political life
for decades…Form[s] as good an argument as one can make for
believing that a single individual can alter the course of history.
But Jackson, with sublime prose and a sure grasp of the politics
and personalities of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Republics, never
allows that argument to overshadow De Gaulle’s extremely difficult
and domineering personality, and why it never entirely fit the
democracy he helped rescue and then presided over.
*New Yorker*
An unforgettable portrait of a divisive, awkward,
self-contradictory but immensely impressive figure, [written] with
empathy, deep scholarship and shafts of enlivening Gallic wit.
Jackson’s de Gaulle epitomizes the untranslatable French concepts
of gloire and grandeur; but his biography is also a riveting
profile of a figure whose private life, personal sadnesses,
unpredictable intellectual passions and achievements, and
astounding qualities of perseverance made him truly a ‘great man’,
albeit a uniquely exasperating one.
*Roy Foster, chair of the judges of the Elizabeth Longford
Prize*
[An] outstanding biography…with scholarship of the highest class…A
truly great book, for after this all other biographies can be cast
aside.
*The Telegraph*
[A] tenaciously researched, nuanced, largely sympathetic
biography.
*Weekly Standard*
Everything about Charles de Gaulle was outsized: his physical
frame, the range of his strategic thinking, his commitment to
French prestige, his personal austerity. He saved his country
twice: in 1940–1944, by maintaining a French presence in the fight
against Hitler; and after 1958 by ending a fruitless war in Algeria
and by giving France an effective governing structure. Julian
Jackson brings commensurate qualities to this admiring but
clear-sighted biography: unrestricted access to the archives,
commanding knowledge of the period, and an eye for revelatory
detail. Here at last is the biography this titanic figure
deserves.
*Robert O. Paxton, author of Vichy France*
Fully 60 years after de Gaulle emerged from retirement to found the
Fifth Republic, and nearly half a century after he quit the
presidency following defeat in a referendum, he remains a towering
figure in the French imagination, as Julian Jackson, a British
historian, chronicles in his compelling and painstakingly
documented biography.
*The Economist*
Jackson has brought de Gaulle to life for English speakers, while
revealing the many ways the great Frenchman remains relevant to us
today…[A] splendid biography.
*American Interest*
A gripping and enlightening reflection on political power and its
mysteries…Jackson accomplishes far more than merely compiling a
chronology. The book also paints a compelling portrait of its
subject’s inner life and its most salient aspect—his natural
affinity for power.
*Foreign Policy*
[A] tremendous life of de Gaulle…Jackson is the author of a
memorable sequence of histories of 1930s and 1940s France, but this
is the peak, lucid and witty from first to last, charitable where
possible, merciless where necessary, carefully quarried down to the
last cobblestone of Paris and Algiers.
*London Review of Books*
Jackson’s riveting biography of Charles de Gaulle…portrays a
divisive, self-contradictory but still legendary figure; the book
also vividly profiles twentieth-century France from the
disillusionment of the First World War to the dislocations of the
1960s.
*Times Literary Supplement*
In this ambitious and magisterial account, leading historian Julian
Jackson explores both the history and the myth…Jackson masters both
the public arc of de Gaulle’s career, and the detail of his private
life and daily routines. He writes elegantly, with punch, insight,
and authority.
*BBC History*
Jackson writes clearly…of de Gaulle’s maneuvering to play both
sides against the middle in such instances as the near civil war
that broke out in France over the anti-colonial war in Algeria…and
of de Gaulle’s elaborate efforts to calve the European powers away
from American influence and into the French sphere… [An] excellent,
highly useful addition to the library of modern European history as
well as the political history of World War II and the Cold War.
*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)*
As close to a definitive biography of Charles de Gaulle, one of the
20th century’s most protean figures, as may be possible…Jackson’s
wide-ranging scholarship will dazzle academics, and his smooth
synergy of narrative and analysis will engage general readers.
*Publishers Weekly (starred review)*
No doubt the best, most comprehensive, most politically balanced
and appropriately distanced [biography] of Charles de
Gaulle…Jackson…seems to have written the definitive work on the
subject…Deeply impressive, sympathetic to the great man but never
overawed by him. It is also exhaustively researched, as beautifully
proportioned as a building by Wren, and exquisitely written.
*Chronicles*
[A] superb and equitable portrait…Jackson writes with verve…He
allows de Gaulle’s greatness to speak for itself and treats the
general’s writings and military, political, and philosophical
reflections with the seriousness that they deserve. His judgments
on de Gaulle’s thought and action are almost always illuminating
and always measured. Jackson’s is likely to be the authoritative
biography of de Gaulle.
*City Journal*
Jackson makes it so clear how tied to the history and soul of his
country Charles De Gaulle was, and the triumph of this biography is
in so expertly showing how that relationship operated throughout De
Gaulle’s life. For someone wanting to know something about the
character and ideals of France, you can find them eloquently and
expertly expressed by this wonderful retelling of the life of
Charles De Gaulle.
*Books and (Re)views*
A far more sophisticated accounting of the man, showing empathy for
a leader who believed fervently in his own moment in time, a man
who was emblematic of France’s fatalistic view of itself…For anyone
interested in the man or that era, this is an indispensable read…By
the end, we have been given an invaluable sense of de Gaulle and
his times.
*Arts Fuse*
A truly remarkable treatment of the life of one of the greatest
statesmen of the 20th century, and a master class in how to write a
political biography…This magnificent biography of a man whose
foreign policy views have all-too-often been crudely simplified or
mischaracterized provides a good point of departure for such
efforts toward a shrewder and more empathetic mode of alliance
management.
*War on the Rocks*
Beautifully written and comprehensive, it includes very interesting
discussions of De Gaulle’s attitude toward French Jews in decades
when the French army and French right were deeply anti-Semitic, and
toward Israel when he was France’s president.
*Mosaic*
Jackson’s remarkable new biography of Charles de Gaulle is a
gripping read, even for those familiar with the dramatic histories
in which he played a leading role. It works so well because Jackson
weaves into the history of events de Gaulle’s character…Jackson
systematically confronts myth with historical research, without
forgetting that de Gaulle’s myth was an essential ingredient of
French history.
*Journal of Modern History*
Ask a Question About this Product More... |