Hahn: informative, though not suspenseful. His approach is not chronological but ordered by subject matter. (I.e. inner politics, foreign politics, law reform, etc.).
The next round of books from the Stabi is ordered, so I'll tell you what I'll find.
French Revolution: I immediately thought of Stefan Zweig, master of the biographie romancee in the 1920s. His biography of Joseph Fouché is my Dad's all time favourite biography, and it is very good, an illustration of how you don't have to write about a "likeable" character to make a compelling book. He also wrote a biography of Marie Antoinette which was groundbreaking for its time (though not anymore, of course), since it was the first one to address the wretched matter of the royal couple's sex life (or lack of same) for the first seven years of their marriage squarely and without euphemisms, and discussed the likely psychological effects this had on Marie Antoinette. You can also tell that Zweig, who was Austrian, felt in the post WWI world about the Habsburgs like an increasing amount of Germans post WWI (and even more post WWII, of course) felt about Fritz and the Hohenzollern, i.e. after years of uncritical and often over the top glorification going into hardcore debunking mode about the lot of them, though he's not without sympathy for MA, and even admires her in her final years.
Anyway, while Zweig doesn't write short sentences, exactly, he writes beautiful German, and he's a superb storyteller. As he was fluent in French and loved French culture, he had an advantage about a great many French and English biographers in that he could read primary sources in either language. The Fouché biography covers, like Fouchés life, the French Revolution and Napoleon and the restoration of the monarchy from a unique pov. I'd compare it to fanfic written from the villain's pov WITHOUT the woobiefication that usually goes with it. And course Fouché was very good at what he did, so we do have an extremely, chillingly competent antihero/villain protagonist to follow.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: Request for book recs
Date: 2021-05-29 07:08 am (UTC)The next round of books from the Stabi is ordered, so I'll tell you what I'll find.
French Revolution: I immediately thought of Stefan Zweig, master of the biographie romancee in the 1920s. His biography of Joseph Fouché is my Dad's all time favourite biography, and it is very good, an illustration of how you don't have to write about a "likeable" character to make a compelling book. He also wrote a biography of Marie Antoinette which was groundbreaking for its time (though not anymore, of course), since it was the first one to address the wretched matter of the royal couple's sex life (or lack of same) for the first seven years of their marriage squarely and without euphemisms, and discussed the likely psychological effects this had on Marie Antoinette. You can also tell that Zweig, who was Austrian, felt in the post WWI world about the Habsburgs like an increasing amount of Germans post WWI (and even more post WWII, of course) felt about Fritz and the Hohenzollern, i.e. after years of uncritical and often over the top glorification going into hardcore debunking mode about the lot of them, though he's not without sympathy for MA, and even admires her in her final years.
Anyway, while Zweig doesn't write short sentences, exactly, he writes beautiful German, and he's a superb storyteller. As he was fluent in French and loved French culture, he had an advantage about a great many French and English biographers in that he could read primary sources in either language. The Fouché biography covers, like Fouchés life, the French Revolution and Napoleon and the restoration of the monarchy from a unique pov. I'd compare it to fanfic written from the villain's pov WITHOUT the woobiefication that usually goes with it. And course Fouché was very good at what he did, so we do have an extremely, chillingly competent antihero/villain protagonist to follow.