My daughter (an attorney who is currently writing a book), gave me this book last week as a Christmas present. I knew when I first flipped through it and read Churchill’s comment “all newborn babies look like me”, that this would likely be a fun read – which indeed it was!I thought author Gretchen Rubin (also an attorney, now a writer) took a creative and entertaining approach to celebrate the life of one of the most famous men in history, about whom so many lengthy biographies have been written...

I've been wanting to read more about Churchill. He's a fascinating character, but frankly, the amount of excellent information out there is daunting. Where to start?This was an excellent place. Very good information, and a simple overview of his life, from forty different micro-perspectives. As always, you're in good hands with Gretchin Rubin's writing. Though very different from her usual topics of habits and happiness from what I'd previously read, she treats Churchill with great clarity, hone...

Really 4.5 for this one. I loved this biography! It was short, easy to read a little bit at a time, but still thoughtful and unique. The author looks at Churchill from several different perspectives and explains why each perspective may be right in its own way. It feels like an authentic way to look at a person's life. Read it!

This is my first non-human nature/happiness/improvement-related Gretchen Rubin book, and I’m happy to report I loved it. She looks at Winston Churchill through 40 different lenses: Churchill As Parent, Churchill and Sex, Churchill and Hitler, Churchill and Symbols, etc. It’s a fascinating way to examine a biographical subject – and any human, for that matter. For many of the ways, she provides a point and a counterpoint, both supportable by facts, to illustrate how Churchill was nuanced, dichoto...

There were two main reasons the author claimed she wrote this biography: One was to allow someone to know about Churchill without knowing everything about Churchill. This she accomplished. As someone who knew only the basics about the former Prime Minister, I found this book to give me a more complete picture of the man without having to know every detail of his life.The second reason she said she wrote this biography was to rectify the supposedly conflicting details about Churchill's life. This...

13 ways to look at Gretchen Rubin's 40 Ways to look at Winston Churchill:1) Bathroom reading for the overeducated (apologies to Tom Hahn).2) Lists are easy to write because they don't have to have thematic unity or cohesion.3) Lists are easy to read and fun to quote from.4) Lists of historical details are deceptively hard to compile accurately, but Gretchen Rubin does so, repeatedly.5) Ways to look at Winston Churchill that were not considered in this book, but could have been: bricklayer, inven...

Gretchen Rubin is a former lawyer that has been a clerk for Sandra Day O’Connor, provided legal counsel to an FCC chairman, and has been a professor at Yale Law School. In all her free time she wrote a book and started a family. Eventually she chucked the lawyer thing and decided to devote herself fulltime to writing, thus producing her second book; 40 Ways To Look At Winston Churchill.This book is unique because it’s a short 300 page romp through an amazing life, where 40 questions are asked in...

What a clever structure! Author Gretchen Rubin (yes, of The Happiness Project fame) read a number of the 650+ biographies of Winston Churchill, and wrote this book of short chapters that present Churchill from opposing points of view — i.e. Churchill as good father, Churchill as neglectful father. I knew very little about Churchill before reading this book and, frankly, didn’t think I needed to know more. I was interested in Rubin’s structuring of the biography, not in her subject. However, desp...

The layout of the cover is rather blocky and unattractive. The tan and red color scheme doesn't help much either. Thankfully if you keep it on the shelf you won't have to look at it much. The fact that the pages are the same tan color as the cover is an issue for me as well. I like a book to have white pages and these have an ugly jaundiced look to them. The top of the pages are also covered with unsightly little brown spots. The possibility that these are tiny bug poops makes me hesitant to eve...

I absolutely loved this biography of Winston Churchill. The back and forth between the positive and negative views of him, both of which have their own truth, lent a sense of humanity to this great figure from history. Great figures in history are just human but their nature and their circumstances combine to produce a character that is larger than life and hopefully an inspiration to subsequent generations.I couldn't wait to read another installment every evening. The chapters were short and ea...

Extremely readable, great for fans of Gretchen Rubin, and a great portrait of a very complicated person. I thought he was 100% perfect except for his haha foibles haha like building brick walls for fun and drinking in bed. Then I talked to a friend who is Nigerian. So listen, he's complicated. I mean he's very complicated. I prefer to focus on his fight against Hitler, and I think we all do. Maybe the wish of 2018 is that we can have someone who is totally 100% morally pure, even though I think

Book Report “40 Ways To Look At Winston Churchill”Name of the book: “40 Ways To Look At Winston Churchill”Author: Gretchen RubinDate: 5/8/20Characters who I like and reasons: Winston Churchill is a man that is so crazy and calm, amazing, and terrible and almost indescribable. This man may very well be the most intricate and unexplainable man of the 20th century.Summerize in three sentences: “40 Ways To Look At Winston Churchill” is the story of Winston Churchill through the eyes of his many book...

This condensed summary of Churchill was just right for me. I appreciated the pro and con perspectives on certain topics (depression, alcoholism, family life etc.). He clearly made the difference for Britain as it faced Nazi Germany alone. His oratory strengthened the country's resolve to endure horrible sacrifices. And yet his unabashed imperialism and condescension toward almost everyone was not appealing (and not that different from Hitler). From birth to death, WC was his certainly his own pe...