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Book Cover
BOOK
Author Larson, Erik, 1954- author.

Title The splendid and the vile : a saga of Churchill, family, and defiance during the Blitz / Erik Larson.

Publisher New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group; 2020.
©2020

Copies

ITEM LOC CALL # STATUS
 Ashland adult nonfiction  940.54 LAR    AVAILABLE
 Bayfield nonfiction  940.54 LAR    AVAILABLE
 Boulder Junction adult nonfiction  940.54 LAR    AVAILABLE
 Cable adult nonfiction  940.54 LAR    AVAILABLE
 Drummond adult fiction  940 LAR    AVAILABLE
 Eagle River adult nonfiction  940.54 LAR    AVAILABLE
 Grantsburg adult nonfiction  940.54 LARSON HISTORY    AVAILABLE
 Hayward adult and young adult nonfiction  940.54 LAR    AVAILABLE
 Hurley adult paperbacks  940 LAR    AVAILABLE
 Iron River adult nonfiction  940.54 LAR    DUE 04-09-24

Edition First edition.
Descript xii, 585 pages : map ; 25 cm
Note Nonfiction.
Bibliog. Includes bibliographical references (pages [505]-554) and index.
Summary On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisers who comprised Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” including his lovestruck private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Frederick Lindemann. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when—in the face of unrelenting horror—Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.
Subject Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965.
Prime ministers -- Great Britain -- Biography.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Campaigns -- Great Britain.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Great Britain.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Social aspects -- Great Britain.
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1936-1945.
Great Britain -- History -- 1936-1945.
Genre Biographies.
ISBN/ISSN 0385348711 (hardcover)
9780385348713 (hardcover)