The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
Author: Ron Suskind
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See also: Through My Own Eyes or The Therapists Emotional Survival
King, Kaiser, Tsar: Three Royal Cousins Who Led the World to War
Author: Catrine Clay
The extraordinary family story of George V, Wilhelm II, and Nicholas II: they were tied to one another by history, and history would ultimately tear them apart.
Drawing widely on previously unpublished royal letters and diaries, made public for the first time by Queen Elizabeth II , Catrine Clay chronicles the riveting half century of the overlapping lives of royal cousins George V of England, Wilhelm II of Germany, and Nicholas II of Russia, and their slow, inexorable march into conflict in World War I. They saw themselves as royal colleagues, a trade union of kings, standing shoulder to shoulder against the rise of socialism, republicanism, and revolution, and in 1914, on the eve of war, they controlled the destiny of Europe and the fates of millions of their subjects. Clay deftly reveals how intimate family details had deep historical significance, causing the tensions that abounded between them. At every point in her remarkable book, Clay sheds new light on a watershed period in world history.
Publishers Weekly
How did WWI happen? Was it the inevitable product of vast, impersonal forces colliding? Or was it a completely avoidable war that resulted from flawed decisions by individuals? Clay (Princess to Queen), a documentary producer for the BBC, inclines strongly to the latter explanation, and she brilliantly narrates how just three men led their nations to war. Forming a trade union of majesties, King George V (Britain), Kaiser Wilhelm II (Germany) and Czar Nicholas II (Russia) were cousins who together ruled more than half the world. They were a family, and thus subject to the same tensions and turmoil that afflict every family. They had "played together, celebrated each other's birthdays... and later attended each other's weddings," but still, while George and Nicholas were close, Wilhelm was something of an outsidera feeling exacerbated by his paranoia and self-loathing. Over time, his sense of exclusion and humiliation would avenge itself on the family and eventually contributed strongly to the murder of Nicholas and the loss of his own throne. Clay's theory does have a holethough not ruled by the "cousins," France and Austria-Hungary also played major roles in the outbreak of warbut that does not detract from the ingenuity and pleasure of her narrative. 35 b&w photos. (July)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationKirkus Reviews
Did sibling rivalry lead to the slaughter that was World War I? This psychobiography makes a good case in the affirmative. BBC documentarian Clay delivers only a bit of news, but lights up some of the shadows in the lives of the cousins who would become George V, Wilhelm II and Nicholas II. Georgie was a bit of a thickie, Willie a born victim and Nicky pleasing but ineffectual. Each, descended from Queen Victoria, had unusual burdens, but young Wilhelm had more than his share. Mauled by a doctor's forceps on delivery, he could not easily do some of the things other boys of his age and class did, such as ride a horse or shoot a bow. When Nicky and Georgie came over to Germany to play, they often left Willie out of the proceedings; moreover, Nicky never liked Willie personally, and he "was snubbed by his English relations, again and again and often with relish, feeding his paranoia and playing right into the hands of the Anglophobes," the Prussian nationalists who came to dominate his administration. Small wonder that as early as 1910, Germany was spoiling to go to war to avenge the slights against its thoroughly militarized (if, we learn, gay) emperor; small wonder that Wilhelm took the Triple Entente, which hemmed Germany between England and Russia, as a personal insult. Clay ventures that, though Tsar Nicholas was no help, George might have been able to negotiate a workable peace, since some difficult episodes with Queen Victoria had already demonstrated that Wilhelm was well capable of reason. As it happened, George was the only one of the cousins whose rule survived the vicious war that followed; the Bolsheviks executed Nicholas and his family, Wilhelm went into exile on the coast ofHolland, railing daily against socialists and Jews, and the world lurched on toward a still greater catastrophe. Readable, if something of a footnote to history.
Table of Contents:
Illustrations ixAcknowledgements xi
Note on Dates and Spellings xiii
Family Tree xiv
Introduction 1
Willy's Bad Start 5
Georgie, the Second Son 23
Nicky, the Third Cousin 41
The Education of Three Royal Cousins 59
Family Dramas 77
Family Strife 94
I Bide My Time 109
Willy, the Kaiser 128
A Wedding and a Betrothal 148
Nicky and Willy 167
Turn of the Century 185
Uncle Bertie and his Two Nephews 205
Willy and Nicky in Trouble 225
Dangerous Disagreements 244
Scandals and Rivalries 263
George Inherits the Throne at Last 283
Three Cousins Go to War 303
The End 324
Epilogue 352
Notes 361
Bibliography 388
Index 395
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