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Cargando... George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I (edición 2011)por Miranda Carter (Autor)
Información de la obraGeorge, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I por Miranda Carter
   Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.  MiaCulpa | Apr 12, 2022 |    ) Jthierer | Jan 13, 2020 |  ) kaitanya64 | Jan 3, 2017 | This book portrays the ending of the great monarchies in Europe as World War I created very different states. Although very well researched with details of treaties, conflicts (the Boer War), and much political intrigue, the personal stories of each man and his family is what is most interesting. It is amazing that such people in power could be so totally removed from the life and culture of those they were ruling. (  ) maryreinert | Apr 12, 2016 | Queen Victoria was really the glue that held this large royal family together. She had so many children and married them off so widely, that it seems that just about every royal family was related by blood or marriage to her. Her husband, Prince Albert, was a huge proponent of the idea that familial relations between royalty in different countries would bring about peace and understanding between countries that were otherwise prone to disagreements and fighting. Obviously, this did not hold true. I thought a lot about this idea and I haven't yet seen much evidence that it ever worked. All the way back to Medieval Europe, Kings were marrying off daughters to Kings and Princes in other countries to try to broker peace or gain territory. I can't think of many instances where it actually worked, or at least not without a lot of fighting and war to maintain gained lands. In this book, though the royal cousins got along somewhat, they both didn't have enough power (or education or leadership skills) to get the results they wanted and, when it came down to it, they valued their individual power and status over their family relations. Really, that seems obvious to me. In any job or position of power, wouldn't you hope that a leader would put his/her convictions and the welfare of the whole over what would benefit family most? Now, in this situation it didn't work out either way because these men were terrible leaders, but I don't like the idea of royalty making decisions for their country to appease each other. One thing I found shocking was how poorly educated these future Kings were as children. They seem to all have had sub-par tutors who kind of let them do whatever. It's amazing to me that they wouldn't have had the best education that money could buy. There seemed to be an attitude from their parents that it didn't matter since it was a God-given right to be king. Crazy. I also wasn't shocked by this, but all three of these men were really terrible leaders. I mean, when you're just there because of who you happened to be born to, there's no reason to think you'll be able to run an entire, complex country. Both Wilhelm and Nicholas had real power if they had been able to use it, but both were inept in different ways. Carter does a great job of focusing this book. The build-up to WWI has a lot of elements and she stays focused on the role of royalty and the drastic change that royalty in all of Europe was about to experience. It really was the end of an era for kings. One minor criticism of this book is that I sometimes found the transitions between the three countries and kings to be a little jarring. I would just be getting in to understanding the conditions in Germany and all of a sudden we'd be back in Russia. But, I think that it did serve the purpose of keeping the focus on these three men, so it is a minor complaint. This is very readable and I learned a lot. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone with an interest in WWI or the downfall of the monarchies. (  )2  japaul22 | Sep 3, 2015 |
 “George, Nicholas and Wilhelm” is an impressive book. Ms. Carter has clearly not bitten off more than she can chew for she — as John Updike once wrote about Günter Grass — “chews it enthusiastically before our eyes." You turn this book’s pages with interest, however, but rarely with eagerness. It’s a volume that never quite warms in your hands, packed perhaps too airlessly with what Ms. Carter describes at one point as “backstabbing, intrigue and muddle.” That phrase would have made a good alternative title.  Carter’s theme is the social and political linkage between the great royal families of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This provides gossip of a richness to raise Nigel Dempster from the tomb. ... Carter’s view of the descent towards the first world war as a family quarrel among the royal houses of Europe certainly makes entertaining reading. Her story is full of vivid quotations, such as "the House of Hanover, like ducks, produce bad parents. They trample on their young". She observes justly that all her monarchs were anachronisms, "ill-equipped by education and personality to deal with the modern world... The system within which they existed was dying, and the courts of Europe had turned from energetic centres of patronage into stagnant ponds of tradition and conservatism." ... For all the incidental colour, however, The Three Emperors falls short when she tries to put it all in focus. Carter’s first book was an excellent biography of that most cultured of traitors, Anthony Blunt. This time around, she offers a romp through the palaces of Europe in their last decades before Armageddon, but there is little here to surprise any student of modern history. In particular, she does not know enough about the rival forces, tensions and ambitions that precipitated war in 1914 to analyse them convincingly. She has shown that she is capable of writing a much better book than this one, but perhaps it should have been within a less ambitious compass. "When so markedly eccentric a nature dominates a realm there cannot but be convulsions." So commented Philipp zu Eulenburg, one of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany's few friends. His remark encapsulates the problem with autocracy, the danger of allowing a single, flawed, human being to exercise absolute, or near absolute, power. Part of Miranda Carter's argument in The Three Emperors: three cousins, three empires and the road to the First World War is that the autocratic cousins, Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas II (known to each other as Willy and Nicky) were not always quite as powerful as they thought they were. Nevertheless, they still exercised a lot more of the real thing than did the third cousin, King George V (or Georgie).  Carter draws masterful portraits of her subjects and tells the complicated story of Europe’s failing international relations well ... Over all, this highly readable and well-documented account is a useful addition to the huge literature on the question of why a general European war came in 1914. Carter shows how hereditary monarchies made their contribution to the disaster. It’s enough to make one a republican. In non-fiction I enjoyed Miranda Carter's The Three Emperors (Fig Tree), which takes what should have been a daunting subject – the interrelationships between the rulers of the three great European powers in the run-up to the first world war – and through sheer wit and narrative elan turns it into engaging drama. Like David Nicholls, in fact, Carter has a notable gift for characterisation – a quality just as important in a popular historian as in a novelist. PremiosDistinciones
In the years before World War I, the great European powers were ruled by three first cousins: King George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Tsar Nicholas II. Carter uses the cousins' correspondence and a host of historical sources to tell their tragicomic stories. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Debates activosNingunoCubiertas populares
 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)940.3112History and Geography Europe Europe World War I 1914-1918 Political history CausesClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (3.91)
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Carter has obviously researched widely and accessed the cousins' correspondence with each other, highlighting the utter dullness of George and Nicholas and the strangeness of Wilhelm, and building a compelling story about how none of them were ready to lead their country at such a dangerous time in history. (