A History of Eastern Europe by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius

Union Ave Books is offering curbside and home delivery of books, as well as $3.00 shipping at this time. Step 1 - Purchase a Book: We encourage you to purchase a book to attend, but it is not required. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports-some released only recently-Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest and of course 10 Downing Street in London. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally-and willing to fight to the end. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons.

Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. “Churchill’s lessons of resilience and his style of steady-handed leadership are essential to the state of mind of American readers.”- Vanity Fair

“A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”-NPR

The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz-an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis.

The event takes place on Wednesday May 13th 6pm on Zoom as Union Ave Books and University of Tennessee Humanities Center continue a new Public Books Masterclass series. Join UTK professor Vejas Gabriel Lieulevicius and 'Zoom in' to discuss this WWII chronicle of Churchill, THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE by Erik Larson.

A History of Eastern Europe by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius