"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

A Duel of Giants: Bismarck, Napoleon III, and the Origins of the Franco-Prussian War (David Wetzel, 2003)

I was looking forward to reading this because it ties to a bunch of other stuff I've been reading lately. And the link from the Franco-Prussian dust-up of 1870 to WWI is so direct that I was interested in knowing more about how this got started.

But the book wasn't that interesting. The author clearly has done his homework. There were many elements in the rivalry; he focuses in incredible detail on a dispute over the succession to the Spanish throne (to France's chagrin, a Hohenzollern prince became a candidate).

All this was too much for some of the French politicians to stomach, following closely on the 1866 embarrassments in which German unification (and Prussian-led prevalence over Austria) advanced. (With what followed in fairly short order, it's always hard to believe Germany didn't exist as a state until this era.)

The cover photo on the book shows the famous photo of Bismarck and an aging Napoleon III (after the French had been demolished in short order). But those two characters weren't given much emphasis in the book.

Read at gym. Just average.
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