A warts-and-all Life of Raymond Chandler manages to make its subject lovable.

proteges necessary for the Bismarckian vision to survive and flourish. “He was not, as so many contemporaries believed, a fixed star in the firmament giving the Second Reich its bearings,” writes Palmer. “Rather he was a meteor, dazzling bright for a short span of time but falling to earth as a formless rock of unmalleable ironstone. Men remembered the meteor’s brilliance all the more because it left no afterglow and they were soon enveloped in darkness.”

That is a pretty standard interpretation. But Palmer believes that, if Bismarck’s approach to internal politics was flawed, his approach to European politics was no less so. Indeed, he suggests that Bismarck didn’t really have much of a diplomatic vision in the first place. Rather, says Palmer, his career was characterized by a preoccupation with power for its own sake, and by a concern for personal survival that blurred any vision he may have had of a durable European order.

PL

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Priscilla L. Buckley

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proteges necessary for the Bismarckian vision to survive and flourish. “He was not, as so many contemporaries believed, a fixed star in the firmament giving the Second Reich its bearings,” writes Palmer. “Rather he was a meteor, dazzling bright for a short span of time but falling to earth as a formless rock of unmalleable ironstone. Men remembered the meteor’s brilliance all the more because it left no afterglow and they were soon enveloped in darkness.”

That is a pretty standard interpretation. But Palmer believes that, if Bismarck’s approach to internal politics was flawed, his approach to European politics was no less so. Indeed, he suggests that Bismarck didn’t really have much of a diplomatic vision in the first place. Rather, says Palmer, his career was characterized by a preoccupation with power for its own sake, and by a concern for personal survival that blurred any vision he may have had of a durable European order.