For 57 consecutive nights in 1940, Nazi Germany tried to bring England to its knees. Waves of planes pummeled cities with high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices as part of a campaign to break the English spirit and destroy the country’s capacity to make war. One man stood strong against the onslaught: Winston Churchill.
Historian Erik Larson’s new book takes an in-depth look at this defiant prime minister who almost singlehandedly willed his nation to resist. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz examines a leader in crisis—a challenge of epic proportions with the fate of democracy hanging in the balance. Larson, author of the New York Times best sellers The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake, details Churchill’s boldness in standing alone against the Nazi menace by urging his countrymen to overcome hopelessness and fight back. He combed archives with a new lens to uncover fresh material about how England’s “bulldog” rallied his nation from imminent defeat to stand bloodied but unbowed as an island fortress of freedom. In an interview with Smithsonian, Larson describes how he came to write his new book and what surprises he learned about the man who reminds us today what true leadership is all about.
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