Books by John Preston
“I thought, ‘Robert Maxwell: why? It’s sad, it’s unpleasant, it was a long time ago.’ And I think I can say all of us judges were just gripped. It was the absolute readability of the book. I think there’s been around a dozen Maxwell biographies—someone counted them all up—and it shows you can still get new things out of an old subject. It’s all about the skill of the writing…Maxwell was born into an impoverished Czechoslovakian Jewish family on the eve of Nazism. It was very traumatic; he lost his family in the Holocaust. Preston never skates over that, not at all, but looks at what Maxwell did with that. For a long time, for instance, he denied that he was Jewish. And yet, he ended up being buried on the Mount of Olives because he put so much money into Israel.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist
Kathryn Hughes, Literary Scholar
Interviews where books by John Preston were recommended
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1
Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955
by Harald Jähner & Shaun Whiteside (translator) -
2
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
by Patrick Radden Keefe -
3
Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape
by Cal Flyn -
4
Things I Have Withheld
by Kei Miller -
5
Fall: The Mysterious Life and Death of Robert Maxwell, Britain's Most Notorious Media Baron
by John Preston -
6
Free: Coming of Age at the End of History
by Lea Ypi
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist, recommended by Kathryn Hughes
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist, recommended by Kathryn Hughes
Every year the judges of the Baillie Gifford Prize pick out the very best nonfiction books, the shortlist they come up with a brilliant way to find gripping books to immerse yourself in. Here cultural historian Kathryn Hughes, one of this year’s judges, talks us through the six books they chose for the 2021 shortlist, books that will draw you in, whatever the subject.
