New Releases by Stanley Weintraub

Just a few of the words of presidential wisdom found in Dear Young Friend: “I rejoice that you have learnt to write,…for as this is done with a goosequill, you know the value of a goose.” –Thomas Jefferson, to his granddaughter, Cornelia Randolph “As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a bit of silly affection if were to begin now?” –Abraham Lincoln to Grace Bedell “If we are successful [in the election], it will not be handsome behavior for any of my family to exhibit exultation or talk boastingly, or be in vain about it.” –Rutherford B. Hayes, to his son “Ruddy” “The other sixty cents are for my other six grandchildren. They are not born yet.” –Theodore Roosevelt, to Marjorie Sterrett, who was collecting dimes to fund a battleship “The John Birchers are just Ku Klux without the nightshirts.” –Harry Truman to David S. McCracken “If you really believe, you will see them. My [Irish] ‘little people’ are very small, wear tall black stovepipe hats, green coats and pants, and have long, white beards.” –John Kennedy to Mark Aaron Perdue Presidents since Washington have written to children. Chief executives prior to the overwhelmingly busy present even went through the White House mail themselves, choosing what to answer—a task in the e-mail age now impossible. Some earlier presidents, even as late as Eisenhower, confided opinions to young people that they rarely confessed to their peers. The letters range in subject form the monumental to the immaterial—although almost nothing is insignificant to a child.

By mid-1917, with the world war going badly on all fronts, and casualties burgeoning, Prime Minister David Lloyd George met with General Edmund Allenby, fresh from France. Lloyd George wanted “Jerusalem for Christmas” as a holiday “present” for the increasingly disillusioned British people. Its seizure would also eliminate the Ottomans, who had inflicted the dismaying disaster at the Dardanelles, as a factor in the war. As Allenby departed, the PM handed him George Adam Smith’s Historical Geography of the Holy Land, remarking that it was a better guide to reaching Jerusalem than anything “in the pigeon holes of the War Office”. Having been raised on the Bible, Allenby, as this narrative illustrates, did indeed exploit it. He would also have unanticipated expertise from an unknown and unmilitary officer, T. E. Lawrence, who turned his Arabian “sideshow” into campaigns distracting the Turks and their German military leadership. The desert war would be hard-fought, but, that December, after centuries in Muslim hands and with its sacred sites intact, Jerusalem fell.

The epic story of the 1950 Christmas season, when American troops faced extreme cold, a determined enemy, and long odds

Describes the pre-presidency political and wartime career of America''s 32nd president, from his time in the Navy to his fraying marriage to his cousin Eleanor and how falling ill with polio was unable to stop his rise to power in Washington DC.

A compelling narrative about FDR, preoccupied with winning the war and his deteriorating health, and the hard-fought presidential election for an unprecedented fourth term

Although the Victorian era closed, literally, with the death of the Queen in January 1901, the post-Victorian transition had begun decades earlier. Farewell, Victoria! presents Stanley Weintraub''s engaging perspectives on late-Victorian literature, primarily but not exclusively its fiction, which looked backward to popular antecedents and forward to the societal and technological future. The early 1880s saw the close of iconic Victorian literary careers--Disraeli, Rossetti, Eliot, Meredith, and Trollope among others. It was also the decade of new reputations that would continue in some cases into the middle of the next century. The 1890s witnessed a plethora of experiments in modernity. The Yellow Book and The Savoy, graphic realism and a redefinition of morals, futuristic prophecy and exotic fantasy would expand taste, enlarge the market for books, and write a finis to leftovers from the past. Publisher''s note.

Christmas 1941 came little more than two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The shock -- in some cases overseas, elation -- was worldwide. While Americans attempted to go about celebrating as usual, the reality of the just-declared war was on everybody''s mind. United States troops on Wake Island were battling a Japanese landing force and, in the Philippines, losing the fight to save Luzon. In Japan, the Pearl Harbor strike force returned to Hiroshima Bay and toasted its sweeping success. Across the Atlantic, much of Europe was frozen in grim Nazi occupation. Just three days before Christmas, Churchill surprised Roosevelt with an unprecedented trip to Washington, where they jointly lit the White House Christmas tree. As the two Allied leaders met to map out a winning wartime strategy, the most remarkable Christmas of the century played out across the globe. Pearl Harbor Christmas is a deeply moving and inspiring story about what it was like to live through a holiday season few would ever forget.

People known to Bernard Shaw had every reason to fear becoming recognisable characters in his plays. However, as eminent Shaw scholar Stanley Weintraub reveals in this collection, Shaw''s relationships to real or imagined personalities could be both curiously unexpected and deliciously complex.

Historian Stanley Weintraub, author of Silent Night, combines two winning topics—Christmas and the Civil War—in General Sherman’s Christmas, new from Smithsonian Books. Focusing on the holiday season of 1864, when General Sherman relentlessly pushed his troops across Georgia to capture Savannah, General Sherman’s Christmas includes the voices of soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict and is illustrated with striking period prints, making it the perfect holiday present for every history buff.

The sweeping and dramatic story of America''s three great five-star generals, who steered America to victory through World War II and shaped the decade that followed, while jockeying against and helping one another as patrons, bosses, friends, and rivals. In the closing days of World War II, America looked up to three five-star generals as its greatest heroes. George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Douglas MacArthur personified victory, from the Pentagon to Normandy to the Far East. Counterparts and on occasion competitors, they had leapfrogged each other, sometimes stonewalled each other, even supported and protected each other throughout their celebrated careers. In the public mind they stood for glamour, integrity, and competence. But for dramatic twists of circumstance, all three—rather than only one—might have occupied the White House. The story of their interconnected lives opens a fascinating window onto some of the twentieth century''s most crucial events, revealing the personalities behind the public images and showing how much of a difference three men can make. Marshall and MacArthur were contemporaries and competitors. Eisenhower was MacArthur''s underling, then Marshall''s deputy, before becoming MacArthur''s counterpart as a supreme commander, Ike in Western Europe, MacArthur in the Pacific. Each of the three five-star generals would go on to extraordinary postwar careers: MacArthur as a virtual viceroy of Japan, overseeing its transition to a new constitutional democracy, and then leading the UN forces in the Korean War; Marshall as secretary of state, author of the Marshall Plan, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize; Eisenhower as president. Fifteen Stars presents the intertwined lives of these three great men against the sweeping background of six unforgettable decades, from two world wars to the Cold War. It is history at its most dramatic yet most personal—a triumph for Stanley Weintraub, our preeminent military historian.

In 11 Days In December, master historian and biographer Stanley Weintraub tells the remarkable story of the Battle of the Bulge as it has never been told before, from frozen foxholes to barn shelters to boxcars packed with wretched prisoners of war. In late December 1944, as the Battle of the Bulge neared its climax, a German loudspeaker challenge was blared across GI lines in the Ardennes: "How would you like to die for Christmas?" In the inhospitable forest straddling Belgium, France, and Luxembourg, only the dense, snow-laden evergreens recalled the season. Most troops hardly knew the calendar day they were trying to live through, or that it was Hitler''s last, desperate effort to alter the war''s outcome. Yet the final Christmas season of World War II matched desperation with inspiration. When he was offered an ultimatum to surrender the besieged Belgian town of Bastogne, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe defied the Germans with the memorable one-word response, "Nuts!" And as General Patton prayed for clear skies to allow vital airborne reinforcements to reach his trapped men, he stood in a medieval chapel in Luxembourg and spoke to God as if to a commanding general: "Sir, whose side are you on?" His prayer was answered. The skies cleared, the tide of battle turned, and Allied victory in World War II was assured. Christmas 1944 proved to be one of the most fateful days in world history. Many men did extraordinary things, and extraordinary things happened to ordinary men. "A clear cold Christmas," Patton told his diary, "lovely weather for killing Germans, which seems a bit queer, seeing whose birthday it is." Peace on earth and good will toward men would have to wait. 11 Days in December is unforgettable.

This startling new history of the Revolutionary War, told for the first time from the perspective of both the colonists and the colonizers, demonstrates that for the Americans, it was a war of rebellion, for the British, it became their Vietnam.

Traces the arranged marriage of Charlotte and Lionel Rothschild, their love for each other, Charlotte''s success as a great chatelaine of the Victorian era, and Lionel''s rise as England''s leading financier.

Publisher Description

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was the most notorious and misunderstood American artist of his time, and also the most influential. He is one of the most recognized names in painting because of his celebrated -- and endlessly satirized -- "Whistler''s Mother". Born in Mass., he wound up living most of his life in Russia, France, and England. His sense of belligerent alienation erupted in ways that were endlessly fascinating. His insatiable urge to take his grievances to court; his feuds and vendettas with Ruskin, Wilde, and Beardsley; his acid wit and libelous invective; his ability to set fashions in art, dress, even lifestyle; his love affairs and relentless social climbing -- his was a flamboyant life told "with clarity, judgment, and liveliness."

An examination of world wide events on the day of December 7, 1941.

A devastating critique of a general whose pride, egomania, and insubordination nearly led America into World War III is based on eye-opening research by an eminent biographer, military historian and veteran of the Korean War. of photos.

Biography of Edward VII covering the years before he became king.

Stanley Weintraub, biographer of Queen Victoria and other major figures of her era, here unveils for the first time the largely hidden role of Prince Albert, establishing him as one of the greatest men of his days. Drawing on previously unexplored sources, Weintraub''s Uncrowned King delves into Prince Albert''s political, familial, financial, medical, and sexual life.

Demonstrating the influence of scholar-teacher Stanley Weintraub on his students, Shaw and Other Matters reflects the scope of that influence in its concern with a variety of literary figures - from Shaw to Joe Orton - and of topics such as war memoirs and golem/robots. The variety is there, as well, in the approaches to the subjects: Rodelle Weintraub''s dream analysis of Arms and the Man; Julie Sparks''s comparison of Shaw with Bellamy, Morris, and Bulwer-Lytton as world "betterers"; Michael Pharand''s evaluation of Shaw''s changing views of Napoleon; Kinley Roby''s tracing of Shaw''s exchanges of views on playwriting with Arnold Bennett; and Kay Li''s archetypal exploration of characters in Heartbreak House.

Offering a biography of Albert, this work examines how the Prince Consort was plucked from obscurity from a tiny German principality to sire the succession in the most powerful empire in the world. It examines his marriage, his popularity and the effect he made on Britain.

How could Bernard Shaw have found anything to admire in Queen Victoria? Or in the passionate evangelical "General" William Booth of the Salvation Army? What possible connections could there be between Shaw, the passionate socialist, and the Tory Winston Churchill, who seemed to represent everything Shaw should have rejected and despised? In Shaw''s People, noted Shaw scholar Stanley Weintraub explores the relationships between Shaw and twelve of his contemporaries, including Queen Victoria, Oscar Wilde, H. L. Mencken, James Joyce, and Winston Churchill. Weintraub chose these individuals as lenses through which to look at Shaw but also for the ways in which their lives are illuminated through their often paradoxical relationships with Shaw. While Shaw never met Queen Victoria, his sovereign during the first forty-five years of his life, the degree of her influence is apparent in Shaw''s reference to himself, in his ninth decade, as "an old Victorian." Weintraub explores those in the literary world who interacted with Shaw, such as H. L. Mencken, one of Shaw''s earliest American fans, who turned against his hero at the peak of his translatlantic reputation, and James Joyce, who was loath to confess his respect for his fellow Irishman. He investigates the curious mutual admiration between Shaw and W. B. Yeats and Shaw''s championing of Oscar Wilde despite the vast difference in their lifestyles. Weintraub''s skillful investigation of each of these twelve relationships illuminates a different facet of Shaw, from his pre-dramatist years in London through the close of his long life.

From the inner councils of the Japanese to the fateful decisions to atom-bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stanley Weintraub brings to life this watershed month in which empires fell, old orders passed away, and a new age began. "The best account yet of the war''s final month".--Newsweek. photos. 3 maps.