The review in the Wall Street Journal is now out, and it is the 7th or 8th review by my count. (I try to keep the list current here.)
Philip Delves Broughton is the reviewer, and he has grouped my book, Hannibal and Me, with two others:
- Julius Caesar: Lessons in Leadership From the Great Conqueror, by Bill Yenne; and
- Atatürk: Lessons in Leadership From the Greatest General of the Ottoman Empire, by Austin Bay.
You can see why Delves Broughton would do that: All three books take a great figure from the past, and promise lessons for us today. The other two have the word “lessons” in the subtitle; mine has “lessons” in the title of the last chapter, and the word “teach” in the subtitle.
I’ve long been fascinated by both Caesar (Of course! He even appears in my book) and Ataturk. So I’ll be adding the other two books to my queue.
Delves Broughton begins his triple review with an extended anecdote about Hannibal (the Alpine prisoners fighting one another to the death, which I use to open Chapter 5, “The Art of Winning”). But he doesn’t explicitly mention my book until the end, after he has discussed the other two:
Andreas Kluth’s “Hannibal and Me: What History’s Greatest Military Leader Can Teach Us About Success and Failure” is something quite different, a wide-ranging reflection in which the author takes that lonely figure high up in the Alps, surrounded by elephants, as a prism for understanding his own life….
Fortunately, the book quickly recovers [from a “bathetic” moment in the first chapter] and becomes a charming and fascinating inquiry into triumph, failure and that gnarliest of head-scratchers: What makes for a successful life? Mr. Kluth has the riveting Hannibal at the heart of his book, but there is nearly as much about other famous figures raised and dropped by fate: Eleanor Roosevelt, Meriwether Lewis, Albert Einstein and the author’s own great uncle, Ludwig Erhard, the chancellor of West Germany from 1963 to 1966.
With each of these lives, Mr. Kluth forces us to ask what we admire and what we would rather do without. He offers reflections rather than prescriptions. …
“Your struggles are likely to be less violent and to involve smaller stakes than Hannibal’s,” Mr. Kluth justly notes. But the themes will remain consistent. The good life, Mr. Kluth suggests, is not to be found by trying to imitate those we consider leaders and successes, who are rarely all they seem. It consists of doing what we must, as well as we are able, perceptions and consequences be damned.
Hannibal and Me: life lessons from history 
“bathetic” wow! – i had to look that word up, but after learning it’s meaning… it is definitely not a word i would associate with any of the writings i’ve ever read of yours. (of course, i haven’t read your first chapter yet, apologies)
Atatürk was indeed a fascinating and great man, of course i’m partial. i wonder if the book suggests that if he had not been such a successful general he would not have been able to succeed in his reformation of Turkey. other leaders have been assassinated for attempting to affect lesser changes in their society.
i also wonder if my sons love of fedoras goes back to our (modern) turkish roots 😉 my own grandfather Kemal embraced the hat change happily.
Aha, so you seem to be Turkish now.
Ataturk was a fascinating man. I’ve long wanted to know more about him.
i’m first generation american. i thought you knew! right off the jumbo jet, as they say.
my mother is turkish, my father israeli, my grandparents of mixed religions. Kemal was muslim.
the book about Atatürk sounds interesting. i’m currently trying to get through a self-help book that is “dull but not irritating”, not your book 😉 – one that has been recommended several times and i’m sure would help if i could focus better on it.
The review in WSJ made me interested enough to find this blog. Of the three books, yours sounded the most intriguing, but I’ve always been curious about Hannibal.
Thank you, Nancy.
Browse around on this little page to figure out if you might want to read it. I would love that, of course.
Congratulations! I think a review that finds a perceived flaw and then goes on to say that the rest of the book overcomes that fault is truly positive. (even if the reviewer’s objection is a little pedantic and overblown).
I’ve always been impressed by what Attaturk achieved but I don’t think many Armenians agree.
true enough. about the reviewer and the Armenians.
and much of the progress forward in Turkey has been reversed/replaced by extremists.