Most Popular Books by Edward CRANKSHAW

The awesome figure of Otto von Bismarck, the ''Iron Chancellor'', dominated Europe in the late 19th century. His legendary political genius and ruthless will engineered Prussia''s stunning defeat of the Austrian Empire and, in 1871, led to his most dazzling achievement - the defeat of France and the unification of Germany. In this highly acclaimed biography, first published in 1981, Edward Crankshaw provides a perceptive look at the career of the First Reich''s mighty founder - at his brilliant abilities and severe limitations and at the people who granted him the power to transform the shape and destiny of Europe. "Bismark is a biographical masterpiece, an opus that is truly magnificent." -The Spectator

Tolstoy was not always an old man-not always a bearded patriarch fixing the world with the eye of an angry ancient mariner. He started War and Peace when he was thirty five, and Anna Karenina was finished before he was fifty. By then he had fulfilled his genius and deployed all those elements of his titanic temperament which made him world famous. In a richly detailed and sympathetic book on the most creative years of Russia''s greatest writer, Edward Crankshaw explores the world of Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, the elements in it that contributed to his great art, and the nature of the creative processes involved. Accompanied by evocative illustrations of Tolstoy''s life, Mr. Crankshaw''s text presents a development of this extraordinary man-his idyllic country childhood and his painful schooling, the wild years of conscience-stricken dissipation, the sojourn among the Cossacks in the Caucasus, the army service in the Crimean War, his entry into Moscow and St. Petersburg literary circles, his fateful marriage. It is an absorbing account which helps us to a fuller understanding of Tolstoy''s towering genius-and the limitations that went with it.

When Edward Crankshaw''s Maria Theresa was published in 1969, it was the first full length study of Maria Theresa to be written in English for sixty years. Called to the throne in 1740, at the age of twenty-three, Maria Theresa was wholly unprepared for the events that were to confront her, and trusting in the honour of her fellow monarchs, the young queen found herself with a virtually nonexistent army at the head of a bankrupt and disaffected empire - an empire shortly to be set upon by half Europe intent on shattering the Habsburg power for ever. Married to an amiable but ineffectual husband whom she adored, surrounded by shortsighted advisers senile to the point of decrepitude, her only weapons were her charm, her unbreakable will, and her almost reckless courage. With these, and by her own immense exertions, she first held her powerful enemies at bay; then, choosing new advisers with astonishing skill, and discovering in herself a fund of commonsense amounting almost to genius, she instituted wide-reaching reforms which were to unify the Empire''s bewildering mixture of lands and peoples, and bring it to the threshold of the revolutionary age. With all this she remained a wife and a mother - most touchingly so in her vast correspondence with her many children.

This is the story of the rise and fall of one man against the background of his country''s history - bloody, tumultuous, yet immensely significant - since the revolution in 1917. Nikita Sergei Khrushchev was born in 1894, the child of peasants driven from the land by poverty. The infant Khrushchev was one of a vast family of nearly one hundred million peasants, mainly illiterate, latterly liberated from serfdom. He was a child without history, and as an infant, lucky to survive. Sixty years later, nevertheless, he was to become the dominant leader of the Soviet Empire. In this biography Edward Crankshaw describes how this was achieved. Crankshaw provides a vivid and convincing appreciation of Khrushchev''s extraordinary and contradictory character within the context of Russian history and society. "[Khrushchev''s] career is sketched and his personality analyzed in vivid, readable book by the British Kremlinologist." -Chicago Tribune

The Grim story of the most vicious Terror Agency of all time-Its sinister Power and Barbaric acts, and the twisted men who led it-Hitler, Himmler, and Eichmann. This is the brutal expose of the rotten core of Nazi Germany. Here is revealed the true story of Hitler''s terror police, the in-famous Gestapo-the madmen who headed it, the sadists who staffed it, the degenerate party that spawned it.

First published in 1951, this book by Edward Crankshaw, a leading authority on the U.S.S.R., explores the abandonment of normative Marxism and its eventual replacement by Great Russian nationalism, the predisposition of Russian society to submit to absolute regimes, and the striking ineptitude of Stalin’s foreign policy.

The downfall of the Habsburg monarchy was more than just the end of a great and powerful dynasty. It meant the destruction of the old European order and marked a turning point in world history. Edward Crankshaw’s distinguished study offers a compelling account of the final decades of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, leading up to WWI. At the center of the dramatic events stands the majestic figure of the Emperor Franz Josef, facing the tragedies of his disastrous marriage and the suicide of his only son, and doggedly resisting the ruin of his inheritance. In a sweeping panorama of Vienna, Imperial Russia, Napoleon’s France, Bismarck’s Prussia, and Cavour’s Italy, Crankshaw examines the ambitions and disillusionment that broke the Empire and forged the destiny of the twentieth century. "A good book...a superb narrative...trenchant and witty." -- The New York Times "Sympathetic...scholarly...humane." -- Sunday Times

This book deals neither with the Russia of the tourist nor with that much discussed enigma, the Russia of the conference room. There is a third country, Khrushchev''s Russia, too seldom seen for what it is, too often confused with the mask it wears in the world arena. Edward Crankshaw shows that this, the real Russia, is a country of material progress and internal aims, of young people in a new mental climate, and with a dynamic leader who is first and foremost a superb practical administrator, not the showman-statesman Khrushchev often appears to us. The author gives a fascinating account of the Pasternak affair, and for this new edition he has added a chapter to bring the book completely up to date; in it he discusses the issues of the past two years or so -- the U.2 incident, the 1960 Summit fiasco, Sino-Russian stresses, Soviet space achievements, and the increasing militancy of Khrushchev''s manner and policy.

"The House of Habsburg (pron.: /hæps.br/; German pronunciation: [ha?ps.bk]), also Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and Spanish Empire and several other countries. The House takes its name from Habsburg Castle, a fortress built around 1020?1030 in present day Switzerland by Count Radbot of Klettgau, who chose to name his fortress Habsburg. His grandson, Otto II, was the first to take the fortress name as his own, adding "von Habsburg" to his title."--Wikipedia.

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Bundel artikelen over Rusland na de tweede wereldoorlog door een Engelse journalist