Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 - Softcover

Clark, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140293345 ISBN 13: 9780140293340

Publisher: Penguin, 2007

Synopsis

Winner of the Wolfson History Prize, Christopher Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 is a compelling account of a country that played a pivotal role in Europe's fortunes and fundamentally shaped our world.

Prussia began as a medieval backwater, but transformed itself into a major European power and the force behind the creation of the German empire, until it was finally abolished by the Allies after the Second World War.

With great flair and authority, Christopher Clark describes Prussia's great battles, dynastic marriages and astonishing reversals of fortune, its brilliant and charismatic leaders from the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg to Bismarck and Frederick the Great, the military machine and the progressive, enlightened values on which it was built.

'Fascinating ... masterly ... littered with intriguing detail and wry observation'
  Richard Overy, Daily Telegraph

'A terrific book ... the definitive history of this much-maligned state'
  Daily Telegraph Books of the Year

'You couldn't have the triumph and the tragedy of Prussia better told'
  Observer

'A magisterial history of Europe's only extinct power'
  Financial Times

'Exemplary ... an illuminating, profoundly satisfying work of history'
  The New York Times

Christopher Clark is a lecturer in Modern European History at St Catharine's College, University of Cambridge. He is also the author of Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Life in Power.

About this title

Review:

A magisterial history of Europe's only extinct power, nuanced, dispassionate and utterly gripping' -- Financial Times

`A terrific book ... the definitive history of this much-maligned state' -- Daily Telegraph Books of the Year

`Exemplary ... an illuminating, profoundly satisfying work of history' -- The New York Times

`The best history of Prussia in any language' -- Sunday Telegraph

`Written with great clarity and vigour ... I was completely hooked' -- Antonia Fraser, Guardian Books of the Year

'...thorough, sensitive and well-written'
-- Justin Cartwright, Spectator Books of the Year

Synopsis:

'Of the "Great Powers" that dominated Europe from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, Prussia is the only one to have vanished ..."Iron Kingdom" is not just good: it is everything a history book ought to be ...The nemesis of Prussia has cast such a long shadow that German historians have tiptoed around the subject. Thus it was left to an Englishman to write what is surely the best history of Prussia in any language' - "Sunday Telegraph".

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0140293345
• ISBN 13: 9780140293340
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 816