THE STANDARD READER
The Standard Reader Books in Brief Ulysses S. Grant on Leadership: Executive Lessons from the Front Lines by John A. Barnes (Prima, 276 pp., $22.95). This is the latest revisionist effort to...
...The book deserves far more attention than it has received...
...and 433 pp., $32.50 and $18.95 paper...
...Turner is not uncritical of the queen, analyzing her as an overindulged daughter and an absent, unaffectionate mother...
...One wonders who besides a novelist would dare to name our time after the woman who is perhaps the twentieth century's least representative figure...
...Byatt once dubbed her series of novels about life in England from the 1950s onward as chronicles of "the New Elizabethan Age...
...This is the latest revisionist effort to bolster the reputation of Grant as a military and political leader...
...If you know what that means, there's no way you can pass up these reprints with new introductions by Jonathan Yardley...
...How these bestselling swashbucklers from the 1940s ever fell out of print is a mystery...
...There are no genealogies, dates, or royal milestones in the book...
...her zealous protection of her beloved dogs...
...As president, he was "an energetic, honorable, and, in many respects, strong chief executive...
...The case made by Barnes, a speech-writer, journalist, and Grantophile, is convincing...
...In his preface Turner notes that he does not characterize his book as a biography, but as a "portrait...
...Of Elizabeth II, the poet Philip Larkin seems to have it closest to right: In times when nothing stood, / but worsened, or grew strange, / there was one constant good: / she did not change...
...The writer A.S...
...Two of those definitions are the "butcher" who maximized casualties, and the drunkard...
...These principles, Turner explains, have guided the queen through perpetual family turmoil, including the death of Princess Diana, and are central to her success on the throne...
...Ulysses S. Grant on Leadership is part of Prima's gimmicky but valuable series of "leadership lessons" drawn from the experiences of American leaders...
...Rachel DiCarlo Captain from Castile and Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger (Bridge Works, 633 pp...
...Shellabarger was a master of the high-adventure historical romance, in the direct line that runs from Ivanhoe and The Three Musketeers down to Patrick O'Brian...
...So far, the series has looked at Robert E. Lee, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and ex-GE boss Jack Welch...
...Instead, he depicts Elizabeth through the testimony of family, friends, and servants who provide countless anecdotes of the queen apart from her public per-sona—a visitor to Buckingham Palace overhearing the queen mock him...
...If you don't know what it means, now's the time to find out...
...Captain from Castile is very good, and Prince of Foxes is even better, ranking somewhere around Captain Blood and only a smidgen below Scaramouche...
...Grant, Barnes says, was an innovative leader, resilient and persistent, an effective communicator, a man of character who refused to network his way to the top but let his actions speak for themselves, and a teambuilder who judged others by their performance, not their words...
...Nonetheless, he counts himself a monarchist and one of her admirers...
...In Elizabeth: The Woman and the Queen, British journalist Graham Turner draws a portrait of a woman who, during her half-century reign, has been a paragon of calm stability, never departing from her principles of duty, detail, routine, and emotional self-suppression...
...Grant, he writes, has been the "Rodney Dangerfield of American history," getting little respect...
...Barnes persuasively disputes both...
...her innate inability to hold a conversation with female guests...
...Fred Barnes Elizabeth: The Woman and the Queen by Graham Turner (Macmillan, 214 pp., £18.99...
...Bottum...
...Grant himself is partly at fault: "Reserved and modest," he "allowed others to define him...
...Readers craving a tale of royal scandal will not find it in Turner's book, but this should not discourage them...
...She has almost," a staff member once observed, "trained feelings out of herself...
Vol. 8 • September 2002 • No. 2
