Part of the CBC Massey Lectures Series
In History's People internationally acclaimed historian Margaret
MacMillan gives her own personal selection of figures of the past, women
and men, some famous and some little-known, who stand out for her. Some
have changed the course of history and even directed the currents of
their times. Others are memorable for being risk-takers, adventurers, or
observers. She looks at the concept of leadership through Bismarck and
the unification of Germany; William Lyon MacKenzie King and the
preservation of the Canadian Federation; Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
the bringing of a unified United States into the Second World War. She
also notes how leaders can make huge and often destructive mistakes, as
in the cases of Hitler, Stalin, and Thatcher. Richard Nixon and Samuel
de Champlain are examples of daring risk-takers who stubbornly went
their own ways, often in defiance of their own societies. Then there are
the dreamers, explorers, and adventurers, individuals like Fanny Parkes
and Elizabeth Simcoe who manage to defy or ignore the constraints of
their own societies. Finally, there are the observers, such as Babur,
the first Mughal emperor of India, and Victor Klemperer, a Holocaust
survivor, who kept the notes and diaries that bring the past to life.
History's People is about the important and complex relationship
between biography and history, individuals and their times.
