The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation

Excellent biographical commentaries on Edmund Burke, Alexis Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and Charles DeGaulle. For example, "Burke was the first thinker and statesman to discern the true nature of ideological despotism. This is among his greatest insights and contributions to Western political thought."

I was disappointed, having read Mahoney before. The early chapters cover Burke, Washington, Toqueville, Lincoln, and Churchill. The latter are about de Gaulle and Havel, and both struck me as special pleading. the words great and greatness showed up so often in the de Gaulle chapter that it seemed the author was trying to convince me of something that required no convincing in the earlier chapters. The conclusion's mention of Trump (although not as a statesman) was strange and didn't seem appropriate to the thrust of the book. Most of the content is not original thought, but draws on one or two major biographies of the subject. Before the de Gaulle chapter I was ready to give 4 stars, and after the conclusion I thought about 2 stars.

This book was recommended for our book club and we thoroughly enjoyed!

Mahoney does a great job of making us think about 'statesmen' and their thinking process.... very insightful!

Fairly good bibliography, not much beyond that.