Based on the interesting premise of the book jacket, I asked my wife I could buy it, and did so.

[NNadir]

The excerpt, that caught my eye:

Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930's - Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the twentieth century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and deeds, again the totalitarian threat. In a crucial moment, they responded - first by seeking the facts of the matter, seeing through the lies and obfuscations, and then acting on their beliefs. In doing so, they helped keep the West's compass set toward freedom as its due North..."

I have so much to read, so little time to read it. I do hope to get to actually read this book; poignant in these times.

The book: Churchill and Orwell, the Fight for Freedom. The author is Thomas E. Ricks.

[Moostache]

1. Reading is my sole release from the unrelenting horror of the daily news now...

I am sure it is tedious to the optimists among us, but my thoughts and mind are torn into dystopian hell as the natural outcome of the events unfolding by the hour.

Free speech? Tell that to the vicitims of abduction and deportation for opinion piece authorship or protesting. Tell it to the news organizations that watch helplessly as their owners and managers capitulate 100% Tell it to the universities that are being treated like the mark in a mafia shake down..."nice college you got there, be a shame if it lost its funding".

Leadership in science and technology? Not any more. Firing the best and brightest to give more money to the richest is not a recipe for success - it is the Jonestown Kool Aid being fire-hosed into the public.

Allies and a post-WWII security order? Gone.
Friendship and peace on the North American continent? Gone.
Security at home and abroad? Gone.

Honestly, the longer I interact with the current events and the world these days, the more depressed and hopeless I become. Without losing myself in reading - fiction and biographies mainly - I am afraid I would go quite mad.

[yardwork]

2. Orwell saw the Soviets for what they were.

He was disliked by some who preferred to believe that the USSR was a communist utopia.

[TommyT139]

3. There's an audiobook version, too.

Your local library may be able to get that for you.

[avebury]

4. The Kindle version is &5.99. nt

[NNadir]

5. I am most of the way through the print version and commented on it in another thread here.

"The key conclusion Orwell took away from his time in...

I wrote that post early on in the reading, which I was doing in the waiting room while my wife was having a heart procedure.

It's really a most interesting read, and an interesting juxtaposition of these two historical figures, creative in that aspect alone. They had very different attitudes about Empire, having both been involved in the Empire in very different capacities.

I am now reading (simultaneously depending on my mood) Nigel Hamilton's trilogy on FDR's management of the war, and how, rightly, he and Churchill were at odds in 1943 because Roosevelt, rightly, wanted to involvement in maintaining or restoring the British Empire. Churchill didn't like that one bit, of course, but Roosevelt didn't care. By 1945, the US and the Soviet Union were the world powers and Britain had declined to a secondary power with the Empire reaching a deserved collapse.

Thanks for your comment. I've never done Kindle. I'm an old man and paper is my preference for history readings, PDF's for technical scientific stuff.

[avebury]

6. I added the Kindle info in case anybody wanted to read

the book and could not find it at a bookstore or via their local library.

[NNadir]

7. Yes, understood. Thank you. It's worth reading with any technology.