Grand Alliance

Churchill and America, by Martin Gilbert (Free Press, 528 pp., $30)

WHEN Winston Churchill died in 1965, he was almost certainly the most famous man in the world. Ever since, as he slips out of living memory and into history, he has remained as famous as ever, an undisputed champion of Western democracy who in perilous times stood up to Nazism and Communism. Churchill wrote his own massive account of the events in which he had played so decisive a part. As is only to be expected where such a world-historical figure is concerned, innumerable others have weighed in, and there are debates about this, that, and the other issue in his career, in particular some of his wartime military judgments and the postwar future as he imagined it.

Churchill and America, by Martin Gilbert (Free Press, 528 pp., $30)

WHEN Winston Churchill died in 1965, he was almost certainly the most famous man in the world. Ever since, as he slips out of living memory and into history, he has remained as famous as ever, an undisputed champion of Western democracy who in perilous times stood up to Nazism and Communism. Churchill wrote his own massive account of the events in which he had played so decisive a part. As is only to be expected where such a world-historical figure is concerned, innumerable others have weighed in, and there are debates about this, that, and the other issue in his career, in particular some of his wartime military judgments and the postwar future as he imagined it.