Garibaldi the enigmatic italian leader who people do not know enough about. A man who felt dictatorship was the ideal form of government. Someone who opposed the church and led the 1000 red shirts to liberate Italy from foreign rule. He helped to unify Italy and at the important moment gave up power. Most interesting in this book is the look at the Garibaldis adventures in Uruguay, the 9 years siege of Montevideo, sent me searching for more on the subject. Also the insights into Garibaldis first action when he was briefly in command of Rome against Papal forces and his hatred of austrian oppression of the Italians. A great and unknown figure, read this book and know him better.

This is the only book about Garibaldi that is not boring as hell, basically. This book actually talks about his days in south america, which other works tend to gloss over. I literally could not find out anything about those years spent fighting in south america until I read this book. For that alone it is worth it. Plus, it has a very attractive cover. I once showing this book to a midget named Roscoe, and he said he didn't know who garibaldi was, but he wanted to read it because he liked the cover so much. I told him to get his own, and he ran away screaming and flailing his arms in the air. He even forgot his boombox!

Ridley is brilliant as ever. In his masterly style, he portrays both historic detail and periodic insight in such manner that the reader is captivated from the first page onwards. The ongoing battle with Lady Antonia Frazer's biography is a delight (especially when historical inaccuracies in her biography are condemned to footnotes). A book one cannot put down for a single moment.

I started reading out of a mild curiosity about the man who wrote "Monstrous Regiment of Women". By the end I was fascinated and appalled...Ridley has a lot of respect for the reader's intelligence, and doesn't stint on the ghastly details that made some people (at last) revolt against theocracy in Elizabethan England. Tends to remind Americans just how much we are "missing" , the cure for nostalgia over those days.

Palmerston, he evoked an era of gunboat diplomacy. WHy? Because he understood the British empire rested on its ability to deter aggression and his gutsy vindictive nature of sending the royal navy anywhere it took to protect the honor of England. With the exception of churchill, Palmerston was a great defender of empire, uniquly british. THis is a must read for anyone wanting to understand how America should be acting in the face of terror. Palmerston was the ultimate pre-emptionist.

Having just finished Anne Somersets more definitive bio on Elizabeth I have to agree with previous reviewers that the author seems to have it in for his subject. Does he even like her?. He portrays her more as vindictive, vascillating, procrastinating,vain and downright bloodthirsty. Most notably in her relations with the english puritans, the protestant rebels in the Netherlands and especially her close relatives. The latter being her treatment of Katherine Grey, sister of the beheaded Jane for whom there was no love lost. He does not give her any credit for being a woman in a mans world and having the guts and wisdom to choose some very bright men as ministers and councillors and not yes-men at that. Walshingham and William Cecil openly disagreed with her on many issues but at no time did she contemplate dismissing them. He also appears to be saying that Elizabeth's foreign policy was based on the divine right of princes to rule their own kingdoms, and that rebels against their rightful lords be they protestant or catholic deserve to be severely punished hence her sympathetic correspondence with Philip of Spain. Ridley also has a penchant for drawing out in unnecessary detail execution and torture scenes. When the assassin of William of Orange is submitted to all kinds of horrific torture before his eventual execution, smiling the whole time the reader finds himself squirming uncomfortably. Despite the authors elegant prose I prefer the Sommerset or even Antonia Fraser biographies. They may not deify the woman but at least they dont vilify her.

What a refreshingly well-written, concise and historically well-researched book! Ridley is a master of the historic biography, and every book I have read so far (having started off with his account of Henry VIII) is a riveting read and impossible to put away.

May Royal Tunbridge Wells continue to serve as an inspiration to this gifted writer and connaisseur of the depth of the English language.

Jasper Ridley's biography of Elizabeth is well-written and coherent, broken into chapters that examine pivotal events during the reign in foreign and domestic policy. Ridley's work differs from most Elizabethan biographies in its focus on political and military aspects rather than personal studies of the queen. While at times the text drags, for the most part it is crisp and solid reading, and paints a fascinating picture. What makes the book stand out, however, is the quality of its documentation and use of primary sources, and its tremendous value as a research tool. Mr. Ridley has made assiduous use of archived state papers and contemporary commentaries that depict events as they were actually experienced and grasped by the people in the 16th and early 17th centuries. A student partaking in research on this period or studying the European Renaissance in general would benefit tremendously from a consultation of the bibliography, since the author essentially gives an index of the calendars of state publications that detail various decisions and military planning of the late 1500s. Furthermore, Mr. Ridley is careful to delve deeply into foreign sources as well; he makes extensive use of the archives in Simancas, Spain, as well as archival resources in Italy, to furnish shades of detail often overlooked. The overall result is that Mr. Ridley's biography has an unparalleled "real-time" feel to it. And, the author covers territory that too often is neglected in Elizabethan biographies, especially in regard to military affairs that are difficult to research elsewhere. He examines the English defeat and expulsion from Le Havre in France that resulted in the permanent loss of Calais in 1563; the long Anglo-Spanish war of the 1590s that crippled the finances of both countries, and (with Spanish victories at sea) frustrated English attempts at colonization in the Western Hemisphere while preserving Spain's foothold; and also at the bitter Anglo-Irish guerrilla war of the century's last decade, which devastated the Irish countryside and drained England's resources to the limit. For a detailed biography, Jasper Ridley's biography (along with that of Anne Somerset) is top-notch, and as a research tool it is of inestimable help.

This is not a comprehensive biography of Mussolini the man and politician. More a fragmentary story of the life of M. The process of ascension to power, the conversion of the socialist into the fascist, and the politics of the first ten years of consolidation are not really explored in their depth, as is now expected from a Duce's biography.
Moreover there are considerable gaps in the treatment of the pre-war years and the foundation of the Empire. Also, there are many subjective statements and personal appraisals of the author that do not correspond with the objective view of the modern historians about Mussolini. For instance, his position regarding the jewish question and the racial laws, is not objectively assessed, in its historical context. Also, Salo's period and Mussolini's uncomfortable relationship with the germans are not satisfactorily analyzed. For a more balanced and comprehensive one volume approach I would recommend professor Richard Bosworth's Biography of Mussolini. For truly in depth study, Renzo De Felice's books remain unsurpassed.

Jasper Ridley offers the reader a facile biography of the Italian dictator. Though Benito Mussolini's youth and early adulthood as a radical intellectual are adequately explained, the analysis of Mussolini's rise is shallow. An internationalist socialist until just before World War One, he becomes an Italian nationalist with almost little explanation of why he changed other than his serving briefly as a draftee in the pre-1914 Italian Army. Surely, there is more to explain Mussolini's turnabout. The analysis of post-war Italy and it's ungovernability and social breakdown is weak. Was Italian democractic tradition inch-deep, ready to be exploited by an authoritarian? The Fascist economic system is barely mentioned. Mussolini's thoughts on Hitler's big gamble of sending troops to the demilitarized Rhineland in 1935 are not explained. How did Mussolini come to be the weaker of the two European right-wing authoritarians and did he acknowledge that Hitler dominated the political alliance between the two men? Why did the Italian army have problems defeating the primitive Ethiopian army in 1935-36? Or why did the small, woefully armed Greek army defeat the Italian army and chase it across the Albanian frontier? Why was Italy not ready for World War Two? This biography lacks analysis. More muscle is needed to fill out the man who was Benito Mussolini.

Jasper Ridley's biography of Mussolini does a good job of retelling the life of this ambitious but fatally flawed leader. Mussolini was no Hitler. Even had he desired it, he could never have established totalitarianism in Italy as the temperment of the Italian people simply would not have allowed it. Instead he was sort of like the neighborhood bully elevated to power. Threatening yes, but not truly evil. Had World War Two not happened, his fate probably would have been more similar to Spain's Franco, whose regime died of natural causes with him. The most interesting aspect of Mussolini's life was his transistion from socialism to fascism, but even this can be viewed as opportunism from a man with no real political convictions other than obtaining and maintaining power. Overall, this is a good introdution to the man who in the end got what he deserved from his own people.