Charles de gaulle best biography 2016
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Oh, but I’m too busy to read, we säga. Not now, with the kids, with the way things are at work, while inom am finishing this up.
You don’t have time, really? As Julian Jackson writes in his incredible biography of the French liberator Charles dem Gaulle, “While he was President, dem Gaulle read two to three books a week—usually history, novels or poetry—and made a valiant attempt to keep up with contemporary literature. He always read the winners of the main literary prizes.”
The truth fryst vatten, you aren’t making time to read. Meanwhile, the president of France funnen time to stay caught up on the greatest works of his day and of all time, in between bouts of saving democracy in France and governing the country for more than a decade.
You’d benefit so much if you made reading a priority. Think of Marcus Aurelius reading philosophy during his reign, just as other heads of state have benefited from reading Marcus Aurelius during theirs. Not only did De Gaulle make time for this, but, like we ta
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A Certain Idea of France by Julian Jackson – the life of Charles de Gaulle
On 26 August 1944, General Charles de Gaulle took a high profile walk on the Champs-Elysées. The leader of the Free French had arrived in Paris the previous evening, a day after his advancing troops, and had declared himself president of the newly liberated republic. In a city still swarming with snipers, a walkabout was risky but, as Julian Jackson says, it was “a supreme example of De Gaulle’s instinctive showmanship”. Parisians flocked in their thousands to see the man most of them knew only as a voice broadcasting on the BBC from London. It was “the largest gathering of its kind in the history of France”. De Gaulle recalled this extraordinary moment in his memoirs: “Ahead stretched the Champs-Elysées. It looked more like the sea. A huge crowd was massed either side of the street. Perhaps two million souls. The roofs were also black with people … People were hanging from ladders, flagpoles and lamp posts.
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By Thomas Filbin
For anyone interested in the man or that era, De Gaulle is indispensable.
De Gaulle by Julian Jackson. Belknap/Harvard, 928 pp., $39.95.
There was a joke about Charles de Gaulle in which his presidential aides brought up to him the subject of where he thought he should be buried that would be consistent with his greatness. One aide suggested under the Arc de Triomphe. “So public and vulgar,” de Gaulle replied. Another suggested Les Invalides, alongside Napoleon. “With that corporal?” the general remonstrated. Finally, they suggested building an enormous tomb, 12 stories high in shining polished granite with gold doors, in the Bois de Boulogne, a public park. De Gaulle smiled approvingly but added, “but such expense for only three days?”
For most people in the English-speaking world, de Gaulle is synonymous with Gallic arrogance, conservatism, and a dislike of Britain (along with just about every other country that wasn’t France). His conflicts with