Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age » (Bargain)

Arthur Herman is the bestselling author of How the Scots Invented the Modern World, which has sold over 350,000 copies worldwide, and To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, which was nominated for the prestigious Mountbatten Prize in 2005. He is a former professor of history at Georgetown University, Catholic University, and the Smithsonian’s Campus on the Mall. He and his wife live in central Virginia.

In this fascinating and meticulously researched book, bestselling historian Arthur Herman sheds new light on two of the most universally recognizable icons of the twentieth century, and reveals how their forty-year rivalry sealed the fate of India and the British Empire.

They were born worlds apart: Winston Churchill to Britain’s most glamorous aristocratic family, Mohandas Gandhi to a pious middle-class household in a provincial town in India. Yet Arthur Herman reveals how their lives and careers became intertwined as the twentieth century unfolded. Both men would go on to lead their nations through harrowing trials and two world wars—and become locked in a fierce contest of wills that would decide the fate of countries, continents, and ultimately an empire.

Gandhi & Churchill reveals how both men were more alike than different, and yet became bitter enemies over the future of India, a land of 250 million people with 147 languages and dialects and 15 distinct religions—the jewel in the crown of Britain’s overseas empire for 200 years.

Over the course of a long career, Churchill would do whatever was necessary to ensure that India remain British—including a fateful redrawing of the entire map of the Middle East and even risking his alliance with the United States during World War Two.

Mohandas Gandhi, by contrast, would dedicate his life to India’s liberation, defy death and imprisonment, and create an entirely new kind of political movement: satyagraha, or civil disobedience. His campaigns of nonviolence in defiance of Churchill and the British, including his famous Salt March, would become the blueprint not only for the independence of India but for the civil rights movement in the U.S. and struggles for freedom across the world.

Now master storyteller Arthur Herman cuts through the legends and myths about these two powerful, charismatic figures and reveals their flaws as well as their strengths. The result is a sweeping epic of empire and insurrection, war and political intrigue, with a fascinating supporting cast, including General Kitchener, Rabindranath Tagore, Franklin Roosevelt, Lord Mountbatten, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. It is also a brilliant narrative parable of two men whose great successes were always haunted by personal failure, and whose final moments of triumph were overshadowed by the loss of what they held most dear.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Look beyond the hyperbolic subtitle and the breathlessly apocalyptic flourishes with which this big book begins and ends -- Arthur Herman would have made a great writer of advertisements for Hollywood epics of the Cecil B. DeMille variety -- and you will find a superb double biography of two major 20th-century figures, which is also therefore a superb history of the world their influence shaped.

1 The Churchills and the Raj 15

2 Lord Randolph Takes Charge 35

3 Illusions of Power: The Gandhis, India, and British Rule 51

4 Awakening: Gandhi in London and South Africa, 1888-1895 69

5 Awakening II: Churchill in India, 1896-1899 91

6 Men at War, 1899-1900 111

7 Converging Paths, 1900-1906 129

8 Brief Encounter, 1906-1909 148

9 Break Point, 1909-1910 163

10 Parting of the Ways, 1911-1914 181

11 A Bridgehead Too Far, 1914-1915 198

12 Gandhi's War, 1915-1918 215

13 Bloodshed, 1919-1920 239

14 Noncooperation, 1920-1922 261

15 Reversal of Fortunes, 1922-1929 283

16 Eve of Battle, 1929 309

17 Salt, 1930 332

18 Round Tables and Naked Fakirs, 1930-1931 347

19 Contra Mundum, 1931-1932 364

20 Last Ditch, 1932-1935 382

21 Against the Current, 1936-1938 402

22 Edge of Darkness, 1938-1939 427

23 Collision Course, 1939-1940 443

24 From Narvik to Bardoli, April 1940-December 1941 457

25 Debacle, 1941-1942 472

26 Quit India, 1942 488

27 Showdown, 1943 503

28 Triumph and Tragedy, 1943-1945 517

29 Walk Alone, 1945-1947 540

30 Death in the Garden, 1947-1948 563

31 Lion in Twilight, 1948-1965 588

Conclusion: Triumph and Tragedy 606

Significant Dates 611

Glossary of Terms 615

Acknowledgments 619

Notes 623

Reference List 673

Index 687

Photograph credits 719