Paul Johnson: Out with a new book, this time about heroes from 3,000 years of history
"Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and De Gaulle" (HarperCollins Publishers, 299 pages, $25.95), by Paul Johnson: Joan of Arc, the French farm girl who charged into battle, had little in common Queen Elizabeth I or the iconoclastic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. But they were all heroes, in Johnson's view.
Johnson, the hyper-prolific British historian, gives the trio and other famous heroes the same book-length treatment he did for historical figures in "Intellectuals" and "Creators." This is essentially a quick tour of Western hero history by biographical essay -- more than 3,000 years in 299 pages. The lens is made even wider by Johnson's definition of a hero as someone who over a long period is "enthusiastically regarded as heroic by a reasonable person, or even an unreasonable one."
That generous definition allows him to include Marilyn Monroe in the chapter after Winston Churchill. But really, it could have allowed him to include Alan Greenspan and Kelly Ripa, too, if he wanted.
The pleasure in this book comes not from any grand theory of heroism, but from good short sketches. Johnson nicely describes Walter Raleigh using his thumb to judge the sharpness of the executioner's ax about to swing through his neck and Mae West cagily accruing power in misogynist Hollywood.
Johnson has a keen eye for character details (literally true in the case of latter-day subjects he met, such as Ronald Reagan) and sprinkles the book with fun tidbits: Wittgenstein was a superb whistler; Margaret Thatcher worked hard to keep her hair just so.
Truck loads of books have been written about Abraham Lincoln, but Johnson is gifted enough to capture him in nine words: "He was a good man on a giant scale." And of Scotland's bloody past, he writes "we have to imagine a tartan version of Afghanistan."...
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Johnson, the hyper-prolific British historian, gives the trio and other famous heroes the same book-length treatment he did for historical figures in "Intellectuals" and "Creators." This is essentially a quick tour of Western hero history by biographical essay -- more than 3,000 years in 299 pages. The lens is made even wider by Johnson's definition of a hero as someone who over a long period is "enthusiastically regarded as heroic by a reasonable person, or even an unreasonable one."
That generous definition allows him to include Marilyn Monroe in the chapter after Winston Churchill. But really, it could have allowed him to include Alan Greenspan and Kelly Ripa, too, if he wanted.
The pleasure in this book comes not from any grand theory of heroism, but from good short sketches. Johnson nicely describes Walter Raleigh using his thumb to judge the sharpness of the executioner's ax about to swing through his neck and Mae West cagily accruing power in misogynist Hollywood.
Johnson has a keen eye for character details (literally true in the case of latter-day subjects he met, such as Ronald Reagan) and sprinkles the book with fun tidbits: Wittgenstein was a superb whistler; Margaret Thatcher worked hard to keep her hair just so.
Truck loads of books have been written about Abraham Lincoln, but Johnson is gifted enough to capture him in nine words: "He was a good man on a giant scale." And of Scotland's bloody past, he writes "we have to imagine a tartan version of Afghanistan."...