CHURCHILL REFLECTS ON FDR, HITLER, KIPLING, CHAPLIN, BALFOUR, AND OTHER GIANTS HIS AGE - By Winston Churchill, edited by James W. Mueller. Paperback, 504 pages. Great Contemporaries profiles towering figures ranging from Franklin Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Lawrence of Arabia, and Leon Trotsky to Charlie Chaplin, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw. This edition—the first in twenty years—includes five essays that have never appeared in any previous version, some thirty black-and-white photographs, and an enlightening introduction and annotations by noted Churchill scholar James W. Muller. Written in the decade before Churchill became prime minister, the essays in Great Contemporaries focus on the challenges of statecraft at a time when the democratic revolution was toppling older regimes based on tradition and aristocratic privilege. Churchill’s keen observations take on new importance in our own age of roiling political change. Ultimately, this book provides fascinating insight into the statesman’s perspective. Churchill’s objective is clear: he tries to learn from these giants what makes a man great. He approaches his subjects with a measuring eye, finding their limitations at least as revealing as their merits.