The New York Times Book Review - Richard Aldous
…[a] page turner written with great brio…What comes across strongly in this highly enjoyable book is the fierce commitment of both Orwell and Churchill to critical thought. Neither followed the crowd. Each treated popularity and rejection with equal skepticism. Their unwavering independence, Ricks concludes, put them in "a long but direct line from Aristotle and Archimedes to Locke, Hume, Mill and Darwin, and from there through Orwell and Churchill to the 'Letter from Birmingham City Jail.' It is the agreement that objective reality exists, that people of good will can perceive it and that other people will change their views when presented with the facts of the matter." In other words, we don't have to love Big Brother.
Publishers Weekly
03/13/2017
Winston Churchill, the great WWII British prime minister, and George Orwell, celebrated author of 1984 and Animal Farm, never met. There’s no evidence that Churchill ever read a word by Orwell, and the latter never held public office. But they admired each other from afar and worked for the same purpose: to save the world from totalitarianism. Ricks (The Gamble), two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, brings the two men together in a book whose model is assumed to be Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, side-by-side sketches of people whose existence never overlapped. In vivid prose, Ricks entwines the biographies of two figures who fought in strikingly different ways to achieve similar goals. What is new in this portrayal is their juxtaposition between a single book’s covers, though it’s unclear on what grounds Ricks chooses to do so. Other politicians roused their people; other writers warned of the Nazi and Soviet menaces. However, even if Ricks isn’t convincing in his pairing of the two men, he superbly illustrates that Churchill and Orwell made enduring cases for the necessity of moral and political fortitude in the face of authoritarianism. This is a bracing work for our times. (June)
From the Publisher
"Both subjects, he tells us in this page turner written with great brio, are 'people we still think about, people who are important not just to understanding their times but also to understanding our own.'... what comes across strongly in this highly enjoyable book is the fierce commitment of both Orwell and Churchill to critical thought." —The New York Times Book Review
“An elegantly written celebration of two men who faced an existential crisis to their way of life with moral courage — and demonstrated that an individual can make a difference.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Readers of this book will realize, if they needed reminding, that the struggle to preserve and tell the truth is a very long game.” —Los Angeles Times
"Another one is a book by Thomas Ricks about Winston Churchill and George Orwell. The two never met, but their parallel lives and their views of how society should function, notions of individual freedom, limitations of politics and so on — extraordinarily harmonious thoughts in different places, really very impressive. I went in assuming [they'd be at odds], but quite the reverse. Really, very interesting."— John Le Carré
“Churchill & Orwell is an eminently readable, frankly inspirational and exceptionally timely tribute to the two men Simon Schama called 'the architects of their time.' It is to be hoped that their counterparts in intellectual clarity and moral courage are among us today.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A pungent and pointed piece of history, a great gift for any history lover on your list.” — Seattle Times
“Here is a formidable pairing: Winston Churchill and George Orwell, two of the most famous figures of the 20th century, compared and contrasted in a study that has fresh things to say about its subjects… Ricks tracks his subjects without falling into the usual traps. He is neither sanctimonious about Orwell, nor overly reverential when discussing Churchill.” —Newsday
"A feast of a book, laden with observations and insights that enable us to see these familiar figures, and through them our own time, in a fresh and illuminating light." —New Statesman
“Ricks’s gift for storytelling makes this book virtually impossible at times to set down.” —The Christian Science Monitor
“Superbly illustrates that Churchill and Orwell made enduring cases for the necessity of moral and political fortitude in the face of authoritarianism. This is a bracing work for our times.”—Publishers Weekly
“Very readable and timely.”—The Missourian
“The genius of Ricks’ method is to tell the story of an ongoing struggle through the lives of two extraordinary men.” —Booklist (starred review)
“A superb account of two men who set standards for defending liberal democracy that remain disturbingly out of reach.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)
Library Journal
04/01/2017
Former British prime minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965) was a rotund, boisterous, blue-blooded Conservative who led Britain to victory in World War II. George Orwell (1903–50) was a gaunt, taciturn leftist and commoner; a foot soldier who took a fascist bullet in the Spanish Civil War, and author of the classic novels Animal Farm and 1984. What links these contrasting biographies? Former military correspondent Ricks (Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq) presents Churchill and Orwell as champions of freedom—the right of the individual to be free of totalitarian control by the state, whether fascist or communist. Notwithstanding, Orwell sometimes rehashed anti-Semitic stereotypes, while Churchill was a die-hard imperialist; consistency was neither man's hobgoblin. For his part, Ricks skirts controversy. In one memorable passage, contemporary wit Evelyn Waugh called a benign tumor removed from Churchill's dissolute son, Randolph, "the only part of him not malignant." Superficial and piquant, this quote is typical of the narrative. Churchill and Orwell's stories are fascinating and segue wonderfully into their times—or indeed, any times: Orwell leaped to the top of the best seller lists in reaction to the 2016 election of President Donald Trump. VERDICT A colorful recounting of two proclaimed freedom fighters, which is sure to entertain and intrigue almost any reader. [See Prepub Alert, 11/14/16.]—Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut
AUGUST 2017 - AudioFile
This audiobook is a dual biography of two of the giants in twentieth- century world history, politician Winston Churchill and writer George Orwell. Narrator James Lurie’s deep, gentle voice is easy to listen to but doesn’t fit the book’s character. The author’s purpose is to illuminate how both men saw the dangers of fascism and communism in the 1930s and made their marks defending democracy and personal freedoms in the 1940s. Lurie reads well and has a soothing tone, traits that would be appropriate for other works. Here, though, his talents downplay the dangers inherent in the time period. His delivery of the narrative does not convey the urgency that both Churchill and Orwell saw in fighting what they saw as humanity’s enemies. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2017-02-06
A joint biography of two men who "led the way, politically and intellectually, in responding to the twin totalitarian threats of fascism and communism" in the mid-20th century.As dual biographies pour off the presses, authors stretch to find a suitable pair. That includes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ricks (The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, 2012, etc.), who takes an odd tack with subjects who were neither friends, colleagues, rivals, nor enemies. Nonetheless, given the author's abundant skills, readers will thoroughly enjoy the result. Since Churchill and Orwell never met, Ricks writes separate biographies and then works hard to deliver a common theme. He succeeds because these two men made cases for individual freedom better than anyone in their century. During 1940, at a time when everyone agreed that Britain's destruction was imminent, Churchill treated Neville Chamberlain and the appeasers (who were largely responsible) with respect, ordered no mass murders or arrests, and never assumed that, in this crisis and, of course, temporarily, Britain needed a touch of Nazi ruthlessness. Orwell has always been the conservatives' favorite Marxist, although he was a faithful socialist all his life. An obscure journalist until his breakthrough with Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), he hated totalitarianism in all forms but reserved special ire for the cant and fabrication that all governments employ and that his colleagues on the left accepted when it suited their beliefs. Everyone approves of Orwell's classic statement that a lie in the service of a good cause is no less despicable than in the service of a bad cause. Yet it's never caught on; our leaders routinely announce bad news as good news, and plenty of activists consider lying a useful tactic. A superb account of two men who set standards for defending liberal democracy that remain disturbingly out of reach.
