Most Popular Books by Stanley Weintraub

Biography of Queen Victoria (1819-1901).

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

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.

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

Biografie over de Ierse schrijver (1856-1950)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Publisher Description

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.

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.

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.

Little seems to have changed since Victoria''s day in the instant magnetism of British royalty across the Atlantic; yet for the first generations liberated by revolution, the British Isles and its sovereigns seemed as remote as the Moon. In the young nation, Americans who were little interested in the sons and daughters of their last king, George III, developed a love-hate relationship with Queen Victoria, his granddaughter, that lasted all her sixty-four years on the throne, ending only with her death in the first weeks of the last century. Victoria''s long reign encompassed much of the time in which the young United States was growing up. The responses of Americans toward Victoria reveal not only what they thought of her (and her husband) as people and as monarchs, but reflect their own ambitions, confidence, smugness, insecurities and sense of loss. Parting from England brought a surge of pride, but it also carried with it an unanticipated price. American encounters with Victoria as person and as symbol evoke the costs of relinquishing a history, a tradition, a ceremonial texture. A professedly egalitarian society found itself instantly without some of the familiar associations it valued, and Americans recognized the deficiency. Often, as a matter of pride, they left that realization unspoken. Victorian Yankees at Queen Victoria''s Court is, then, a selective lens into nineteenth-century America — an offbeat way to look at a people and a nation possessed with unruly energy and burgeoning into a wary greatness.

From an acclaimed military historian comes the astonishing story of World War I''s 1914 Christmas truce—a spontaneous celebration when enemies became friends. It was one of history''s most powerful—yet forgotten—Christmas stories. It took place in the improbable setting of the mud, cold rain, and senseless killing of the trenches of World War I. It happened in spite of orders to the contrary by superiors. It happened in spite of language barriers. And it still stands as the only time in history that peace spontaneously arose from the lower ranks in a major conflict, bubbling up to the officers and temporarily turning sworn enemies into friends. Silent Night, by renowned military historian Stanley Weintraub, magically restores the 1914 Christmas Truce to history. It had been lost in the tide of horror that filled the battlefields of Europe for months and years afterward. Yet, in December 1914, the Great War was still young, and the men who suddenly threw down their arms and came together across the front lines—to sing carols, exchange gifts and letters, eat and drink and even play friendly games of soccer—naively hoped that the war would be short-lived, and that they were fraternizing with future friends. It began when German soldiers lit candles on small Christmas trees, and British, French, Belgian, and German troops serenaded each other on Christmas Eve. Soon they were gathering and burying the dead, in an age-old custom of truces. But as the power of Christmas grew among them, they broke bread, exchanged addresses and letters, and expressed deep admiration for one another. When angry superiors ordered them to recommence the shooting, many men aimed harmlessly high overhead. Sometimes the greatest beauty emerges from deep tragedy. Surely the forgotten Christmas Truce was one of history''s most beautiful moments, made all the more beautiful in light of the carnage that followed it. Stanley Weintraub''s moving re-creation demonstrates that peace can be more fragile than war, but also that ordinary men can bond with one another despite all efforts of politicians and generals to the contrary.

This is the first comprehensive annotated bibliography of works by and about Bernard Shaw. No book has appeared before that has surveyed all of the research and writing that the life and work of Bernard Shaw have evoked. The greatest dramaturgist in English after Shakespeare, Shaw was one of the dominant public figures of his time, a long lifetime (1856-1950) that began in the mid-Victorian period and extended into the Atomic Age. Inevitably, someone who straddled his age so visibly and so memorably, and whose works retain a continuing fascination, has been the subject of thousands of articles and hundreds of books, from criticism of individual works to multivolume biographies, editions, and studies. Stanley Weintraub has distilled his forty years of experience of Shaw studies to bring them into useful focus and sort out the significant writings from the burgeoning mass of publications. This book is an essential tool for both scholars and general readers interested in the multifarious world of Shaw. Readers will not only find out what has been done, but what still remains to be accomplished in Shaw studies; what Shaw''s influence has been on other writers; even where Shaw has appeared as a character in other writers'' poetry, fiction, and drama.

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.

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

In Arms and the Man, the Chocolate Soldier, a fugitive mercenary, seeks refuge in the bedroom of the enemy, and in the satire, John Bull''s Other Island, a typical Englishman arrives in Ireland to run for Parliament. Original.

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."