Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman

THE STATESMAN WHO PREDICTED THE FUTUREWinston Churchill was one of the most remarkable statesmen in history—but more than that, he had an uncanny ability to predict future events. Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman, by James C. Humes, a bestselling author on Winston Churchill and a Churchill reenactor, is the first book to examine this extraordinary aspect of Churchill’s character.As a boy, Churchill predicted World War I. He envisioned the tank—and later helped make his vision a reality. As an elder statesman he foresaw the end of the Cold War, virtually to the year. He predicted the development of nuclear weapons, two decades before they were invented. In 1899, he imagined the rise of a figure remarkably like Adolf Hitler. He foresaw the creation of Israel, a cause he also helped advance as a politician. He even predicted the date of his own death.How did Churchill do it? Some of it was simply inexplicable prescience. As Richard Nixon said, Churchill was the only “political leader in history who had his own crystal ball.” But Humes shows how Churchill’s intense study of history allowed him to predict the future, and how his experience as a historian and as a statesman helped him to understand the course of circumstances and events.Churchill once said that a statesman needed “the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.” But Churchill very rarely got it wrong. Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman highlights one of the most amazing facets of one of history’s most amazing men.