There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters: 0: 1

New
Hardcover
2008
$20.92

As the meaning of Thatcher' legacy becomes relevant once more, this funny and opinionated book gives an important and unconventional new perspective on the Iron Lady. In this important new biography, journalist and author Claire Berlinski re-examines the life and legacy of one of the most fascinating and controversial figures of the twentieth century, Margaret Thatcher. This is no insider's memoir. Although Berlinski lived in the UK for the latter half of the Thatcher era, she did not know and hasn't met the former Prime Minister. She has created her portrait from biographies, from historical archives, and, most importantly, from speaking to people who did know her, including key figures like Bernard Ingham and Neil Kinnock. And her conversations with them are pointed and often hilarious.Claire Berlinksi's aim is to offer a portrait of a woman whose influence extends far beyond Great Britain, and far beyond her moment of power. Her victories brought bitter costs in human misery and social discord and her legacy is mixed and in some ways disturbing but ultimately, argues Claire Berlinski, we should be on her side. There is No Alternative is not some moist hagiographic portrayal. Berlinski's aim is to convey a full textured portrait of the woman and her legacy, her flaws and missteps as well as her triumphs.

Synopsis

As the meaning of Thatcher' legacy becomes relevant once more, this funny and opinionated book gives an important and unconventional new perspective on the Iron Lady. In this important new biography, journalist and author Claire Berlinski re-examines the life and legacy of one of the most fascinating and controversial figures of the twentieth century, Margaret Thatcher. This is no insider's memoir. Although Berlinski lived in the UK for the latter half of the Thatcher era, she did not know and hasn't met the former Prime Minister. She has created her portrait from biographies, from historical archives, and, most importantly, from speaking to people who did know her, including key figures like Bernard Ingham and Neil Kinnock. And her conversations with them are pointed and often hilarious.Claire Berlinksi's aim is to offer a portrait of a woman whose influence extends far beyond Great Britain, and far beyond her moment of power. Her victories brought bitter costs in human misery and social discord and her legacy is mixed and in some ways disturbing but ultimately, argues Claire Berlinski, we should be on her side. There is No Alternative is not some moist hagiographic portrayal. Berlinski's aim is to convey a full textured portrait of the woman and her legacy, her flaws and missteps as well as her triumphs.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 400
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 02 Oct 2008
ISBN 10: 0465002315
ISBN 13: 9780465002313

Media Reviews

General Brent Scowcroft, author of America and the World
Claire Berlinski's insight into Margaret Thatcher's character makes this book fascinating, and her intellectual seriousness and rigor make it compelling. It is a perfect marriage of author and subject: Berlinski's Thatcher is painfully real and human, yet simultaneously larger-than-life.
Peter Schweizer, author of Reagan's War
Finally the Iron Lady gets her due. Claire Berlinski brilliantly lays out how Margaret Thatcher's strength and conviction changed the world. Without a Prime Minister Thatcher there might not have been a President Ronald Reagan. And Berlinski reminds us how the whole world would benefit from a new Thatcher today.

Scoffery.com
Claire Berlinski has written one of the finest biographies of 2008. Superbly written. There Is No Alternative should be read by anyone wanting to understand geo-economics and party politics. A masterpiece.
World Affairs
Berlinski has crawled through the archives and interviewed many of the principals of the Thatcher era, and part of the story she tells is about the crawling and the interviewing. She begins with an intuition that Thatcher was a figure of lasting worldwide importance and, more narrowly, one who clearly saw the challenges of her day. She ends with conclusions to the same effect. She makes her journey from hunch to sober appraisal ours as well, leading us back through a fresh look at the issues and personalities as she asks the pertinent and the impertinent questions and challenges the assumptions of the players and their own conclusions about what happened and why.
American Conservative
.,. [E]ntertaining... Berlinski often expresses herself with verve...Berlinski's account of the case for free markets is--as a primer for the non-economist--lucid and lively... She's colorful--thanks in part to some enjoyable inside track from Charles Powell--about Thatcher's relationships with Gorbachev and Reagan.
The Scotsman
Berlinski shows commitment and energy as an author... Her encounters with Neil Kinnock are tactical masterpieces, where she draws the Welsh windbag out and then deflates his woolly thinking with as much cool, perhaps cruel, precision as Thatcher herself did.

Washington Times
Fresh, original and extremely well-written

National Review
Brisk, engrossing, insightful, often charming... a splendid book.

Wall Street Journal
A pleasure to read... As an interviewer, Ms. Berlinski is subtle and dogged.

Globe and Mail
Claire Berlinski has written a much better book about her than one of those door-stop biographies that are now the destiny of almost every public figure.... The book is all the better for being a work of synthesis as well as analysis. Without being hagiography, it is about as powerful a defence of Thatcher's record as is likely ever to be written.

Human Events
[an] excellent look back at Margaret Thatcher's significance

Financial Times
Idiosyncratic and interesting...Berlinski's judgments are thoughtful, particularly her central insight that what underlay Lady Thatcher's hatred of socialism was not only that she found it economically inefficient, or that communist regimes had drenched the world in blood, but that she believed it was morally corrupting.

Claremont Review of Books
Berlinski, who has written insightfully about the threat of Islamic fundamentalism...shows now how capable statesmanship can redirect history's seemingly irreversible tide.

Power Line
The lesson of Berlinski's timely book is that capable statesmanship can redirect history's seemingly irreversible tide.

Newt Gingrich, Washington Times
I strongly recommend ' There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters , ' by Claire Berlinski... Mrs. Thatcher clearly understood that the great threat of socialism was moral and not economic. Socialism is bad because it destroys freedom. It destroys self-reliance, destroys individual initiative, and transfers power from the citizen to the politician and the bureaucrat. Every American who wants to know how dangerous it is for the government to have such enormous influence over AIG, Citibank, Chrysler, etc. should read Ms. Berlinski's study of Mrs. Thatcher. The evils of socialism and the virtues of freedom will be the central choice for Americans in 2010 and 2012, and Mrs. Thatcher will be our tutor in that argument.

American Conservative
. ..[E]ntertaining... Berlinski often expresses herself with verve...Berlinski's account of the case for free markets is--as a primer for the non-economist--lucid and lively... She's colorful--thanks in part to some enjoyable inside track from Charles Powell--about Thatcher's relationships with Gorbachev and Reagan.
Globe and Mail
Claire Berlinski has written a much better book about her than one of those door-stop biographies that are now the destiny of almost every public figure.... The book is all the better for being a work of synthesis as well as analysis. Without being hagiography, it is about as powerful a defence of Thatcher's record as is likely ever to be written.

Human Events
[an] excellent look back at Margaret Thatcher's significance World Affairs
Berlinski has crawled through the archives and interviewed many of the principals of the Thatcher era, and part of the story she tells is about the crawling and the interviewing. She begins with an intuition that Thatcher was a figure of lasting worldwide importance and, more narrowly, one who clearly saw the challenges of her day. She ends with conclusions to the same effect. She makes her journey from hunch to sober appraisal ours as well, leading us back through a fresh look at the issues and personalities as she asks the pertinent and the impertinent questions and challenges the assumptions of the players and their own conclusions about what happened and why.

General Brent Scowcroft, author of America and the World
Claire Berlinski's insight into Margaret Thatcher's character makes this book fascinating, and her intellectual seriousness and rigor make it compelling. It is a perfect marriage of author and subject: Berlinski's Thatcher is painfully real and human, yet simultaneously larger-than-life. Peter Schweizer, author of Reagan's War
Finally the Iron Lady gets her due. Claire Berlinski brilliantly lays out how Margaret Thatcher's strength and conviction changed the world. Without a Prime Minister Thatcher there might not have been a President Ronald Reagan. And Berlinski reminds us how the whole world would benefit from a new Thatcher today.
The Scotsman
Berlinski shows commitment and energy as an author... Her encounters with Neil Kinnock are tactical masterpieces, where she draws the Welsh windbag out and then deflates his woolly thinking with as much cool, perhaps cruel, precision as Thatcher herself did.
Washington Times
Fresh, original and extremely well-written

National Review
Brisk, engrossing, insightful, often charming... a splendid book.

Wall Street Journal
A pleasure to read... As an interviewer, Ms. Berlinski is subtle and dogged.

American Conservative
.. .[E]ntertaining... Berlinski often expresses herself with verve...Berlinski's account of the case for free markets is--as a primer for the non-economist--lucid and lively... She's colorful--thanks in part to some enjoyable inside track from Charles Powell--about Thatcher's relationships with Gorbachev and Reagan. Financial Times
Idiosyncratic and interesting...Berlinski's judgments are thoughtful, particularly her central insight that what underlay Lady Thatcher's hatred of socialism was not only that she found it economically inefficient, or that communist regimes had drenched the world in blood, but that she believed it was morally corrupting.

Claremont Review of Books
Berlinski, who has written insightfully about the threat of Islamic fundamentalism...shows now how capable statesmanship can redirect history's seemingly irreversible tide.

Power Line
The lesson of Berlinski's timely book is that capable statesmanship can redirect history's seemingly irreversible tide.

Author Bio

Claire Berlinski was born in California in 1968. Since receiving her Ph.D. in international relations from Balliol College at Oxford University, Claire Berlinski has lived and worked in the UK, Thailand, Laos, France and Turkey as a journalist and freelance consultant, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Sun, Asia Times, The National Review and elsewhere. She is the author of two previous novels, and one work of non-fiction, Menace in Europe. She lives in Paris and Istanbul. For further information visit www.berlinski.com.