What Churchill And Orwell Had In Common: Both Could Say, 'My Side Is Wrong'
In The News Piece in NPR Berlin
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June 16, 2017
Thomas E. Ricks was mentioned in an article by NPR Berlin about his new book:
Journalist Tom Ricks used to write about the present. His reports on the U.S. military won him two Pulitzer Prizes, and his 2006 book, Fiasco, was basically a takedown of U.S. policies in Iraq.
But Ricks says the wars following Sept. 11 wore him down; so he left daily journalism, moved to an island off the coast of Maine and wrote a history called Churchill and Orwell — as in the British prime minister and the author of 1984.
According to Ricks, both Winston Churchill and George Orwell lived through World War II and had a shared outlook on the war. "At a time not unlike today — when people were wondering whether democracy was sustainable, when a lot of people thought you needed authoritarian rule, either from the right or the left — Orwell and Churchill, from their very different perspectives, come together on a key point: We don't have to have authoritarian government."