Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville)
November 4, 2018 Sunday
‘Titans’ profiles interesting people — good and bad — from history
By Mims Cushing
You could call these “Teacup Biographies.” That is not to imply that they are not without weight. Quite the contrary. Most of the “titans” are summed up in less than 1,000 words — three pages or so — but the author nonetheless offers huge amounts of information.
This is not a book you will read in one sitting. Nor should you. Nor will you say, “I couldn’t put it down. I stayed up all night.” Montefiore has written here about a random selection of (largely) men and some women. So, if one person’s life doesn’t appeal to you, around the corner is someone who may strike your fancy. It’s perfectly fine to skip around and read about people who interest you. You might want to check them off as you read them.
Don’t expect all of those who are profiled to be saints. The author has come up with the good, the bad and the ugly with an emphasis on the ugly. Here’s a sampling of 10. You decide who belongs in which category. Some, you may never have heard of, but most may or may not strike a chord: Savonarola, Casanova, Attila the Hun, CIXI, Escobar, Ben-Gurion, Disraeli, Selim the Grim, Suleiman the Magnificent and Aurangzeb. (Who? Did someone just sneeze? No, he was the last of the Mughal emperors of India. And CIXI? She was the Empress Dowager of China, whom Montefiore dubbed “beautiful, cunning and cruel.”) Pretty amazing selection, wouldn’t you say? You may want to know more about some of these people, those known to you and those unknown. You’ll find 150 to choose from, so many in fact that this book may not leave your sidebar for months.
If you are not into villains you might not cleave to this book. Montefiore is drawn to figures who are blackguards, scoundrels and worse. “The Observer” (London) writes, “What excites Montefiore is villainy … and he (writes about it) with wicked verve.” But he does throw in many well-known and noteworthy people, such as Proust, Jesus, Beethoven, Florence Nightingale, Maupassant, Orwell, Picasso, FDR, Joan of Arc, and Cicero. They are all listed chronologically.
Some of the biographies will resonate more than others. For me, because I am of Armenian descent, it was the chapter on Enver, Talat & Jemal: The Three Pashas. Known as the Young Turks. They seized control of the Ottoman Empire in 1913 and were responsible for killing more than a million Armenians during the First World War. The Turks were offended by the Christian Armenians and their growing mercantile wealth so they plotted dozens of pogroms in 1895. Even now, if people in Turkey mention the Armenian massacres, the “hidden genocide,” they can be sent to prison. Montefiore writes all these snippets in a way that makes one want to dig deeper into some of the lives he unearths. The more you read, the more you want to read.
This is a great book for those snippets of time, as you wait for your three-minute egg to boil, or if you have muted a commercial on TV. It can take you years to read. Feel good about this. You can’t help but learn a lot.
Mims Cushing lives in Ponte Vedra Beach and has written three books.
“Titans of History” by Simon Sebag Montefiore, 622 pages, $20. [Vintage Books]