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sangfroid 's review for:
The Path to Power
by Margaret Thatcher
I admire her for the very characteristic that her detractors loathed her: unafraid and unshrinking, quite like the way Lee Kuan Yew, Ronald Reagan and Indira Gandhi were: they were all of the same sorts, with the same tastes and almost similar interests.
I was, therefore, unsurprised when she, in her earlier book, "Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World", dedicated a number of lengthy paragraphs to Lee Kuan Yew, about whom she waxed lyrical. When I read "The path to Power", I was anticipating to get a glimpse of what made her so formidable, but I was a trifle disappointed when the text did not afford me that privilege. It looked like she wrote the first and the last parts of the books first, and the middle portion had been inserted much later to make the text seem intellectual and objective.
The author assumed that her reader would know the political and social history of Britain in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Thus, people like me who do not know anything about the landmark events and episodes that shaped and made the UK during Thatcher's reign would, naturally, be out of depth when she went into minute details about them.
Still and all, the book was a good read for a number of reasons: she was a smart but humble lady who had politics in her blood right from her adolescence, largely informed by her grocer father. A devout Christian, astute politician, whose sense of purpose to make a difference paved her way to the highest rungs of power in the United Kingdom. If only she had said more about her philosophy, beliefs, private thoughts, and family, "The path to Power" would have been a better read.
I was, therefore, unsurprised when she, in her earlier book, "Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World", dedicated a number of lengthy paragraphs to Lee Kuan Yew, about whom she waxed lyrical. When I read "The path to Power", I was anticipating to get a glimpse of what made her so formidable, but I was a trifle disappointed when the text did not afford me that privilege. It looked like she wrote the first and the last parts of the books first, and the middle portion had been inserted much later to make the text seem intellectual and objective.
The author assumed that her reader would know the political and social history of Britain in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Thus, people like me who do not know anything about the landmark events and episodes that shaped and made the UK during Thatcher's reign would, naturally, be out of depth when she went into minute details about them.
Still and all, the book was a good read for a number of reasons: she was a smart but humble lady who had politics in her blood right from her adolescence, largely informed by her grocer father. A devout Christian, astute politician, whose sense of purpose to make a difference paved her way to the highest rungs of power in the United Kingdom. If only she had said more about her philosophy, beliefs, private thoughts, and family, "The path to Power" would have been a better read.