History's People: Personalities and the Past (CBC Massey Lectures)

“If history is…a feast”, as Margaret MacMillan puts it, “the savour comes from its people”. Indeed, MacMillan’s “People” should be a required “dish” for anyone interested in the study of history not only because of the fascinating personalities she discusses, but because of the way she does it.

In short, her writing is lucid, engaging, and scholarly without being elitist or condescending. Much ink has been spilt discussing Bismarck, FDR, Hitler, Stalin or Thatcher, but rarely has reading about them been so much…fun (this adjective, of course, is not a judgment of their actions). Moreover, apart from these historical giants which she categorizes by their personality traits, Macmillan adds a wonderful homage to the less know figures in Canadian history, intrepid women explorers, and a concluding tribute to select diary keepers who make the study of history not only more interesting, but often possible.

One final note. No, MacMillan does not deny the importance of larger political, economic, or social forces which, as it were, “make” history, but she suggests that it is the specific personalities of the aforementioned people that resulted in their seizing power and inflicting such powerful historical shifts we live (and grapple with) even today.

This is history par excellence from an excellent historian and a writer.

This book’s focus is on various people from history – mostly of the past couple of centuries but some from much earlier. The book has five chapters, each of which centers on a particular human characteristic. The lives of some key people in history who have demonstrated this particular trait are examined – some quite extensively while others rather briefly. The people that are discussed include politicians, explorers, monarchs, dictators as well as others; many are ordinary people who have made a difference in the world or who have simply left a useful written record of parts of their lives and times.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. However, I did find one sentence to be rather misleading at best. The author states (page 3) “If Albert Einstein had not grasped the nature of the atom early in the twentieth century, could the allies have developed the atomic bomb during the Second World War?” As far as I know, Einstein did not decipher any properties of the atom that could have led to the atomic bomb. That was the work mainly of Rutherford and Bohr and, later, Hahn, Strassman, Meitner, Frisch, Fermi and others. Einstein’s early twentieth century work focused on space and time (relativity), Brownian motion, mass-energy equivalence and the photoelectric effect; nothing about atomic structure or nuclear energy or anything that could have led to the atomic bomb.

As indicated, the author’s prose is very chatty, friendly and accessible. It appears to have been written for the interested general reader and so is without the usual jargon that one often finds in more formal works. This book should be of interest to those who have anywhere from a casual to a passionate interest in history and want to read about some of its people – well-known and lesser-known - through a relaxed and friendly prose.

An excellent, very readable book. I recommended it to my friends. Explains what history is through the actions of several personally selected individuals during the 20th century some of whom have changed its course.

Wonderful personal assessment of a number of intriguing characters. MacMillan writes exquisite prose.

Engrossing and readable.

She writes beautifully. An enjoyable history lesson which you'll want to read to the end.

Great price...and fast ship

Apparently, the author wishes to emphasize the charismatic leadership by Max Weber, but one wonders why she does refrain from further elaborating on the Weberian thesis on that leadership pattern. Why does she include William Lyon Mackenzie King in those star-studded politicos, perhaps to prove her many counterfactuals? Jo Guldi et al.'s The History Manifesto on longue duree and the emotionality expounded by British sociologists and historians in the Journal of British Sociological Association way back in the early 1990s could provide answers to the theories and hypotheses advanced by the author. Why not try the complexity-chaos theory?

very smart person & a good read