Gladstone: A Biography by Roy JenkinsReview by: Stanley HoffmannForeign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug., 1997), p. 157Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20048154 .

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Recent Books

she liked to think." He concludes that

the "most obvious missed opportunity" was Britain's failure to join the Com

mon Market early on.

Gladstone: A Biography, by roy jenkins.

New York: Random House, 1997,

698 pp. $35.00. This wonderfully readable volume gives us a brilliant account of the politics of

nineteenth-century England, and of the

weight of the "Irish question" in partic ular. But Jenkins, a former statesman,

also writes with a novelist's gifts. What

is, therefore, particularly admirable is

the re-creation of character, the psycho

logical insights into the motivations

and complexities of a formidable, tor

mented, "most remarkable specimen of

humanity." Gladstone was a man whose

energy?physical as well as intellec

tual?was awesome, a voracious and

erudite reader, a great orator, and a man

who claimed that "religion was more

important to him than politics." Be

tween 1845 and 1851 (from his 36th to his 42nd year) Gladstone "experienced four religio-sexual emotional crises" in

which "temptation and guilt in combi

nation indisputably produced high states of neurotic tension." Gladstone's

wife once exclaimed: "Oh, William

dear, if you weren't such a great man

you would be a terrible bore." With his

extreme sensitivity and frequent self

righteousness, he must indeed have

been more than a little hard to take.

But the sprightly, smooth style of Jenk ins removes any possibility of boredom.

In an age of enormous biographies,

many of which tend to be "pathogra

phies," this study manages to seem

short, and does full justice to its eminent subject.

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A timely and valuable book on a long taboo topic on the U.S.-Mexico horizon:

the complex relationship between the

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media and the governing party. This

well-documented study claims the rela

tionship is often sustained by subsidies,

bribery, fear, and, on occasion, murder.

The result of a two-year investigative

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were killed in mysterious circumstances

over the past 10 years. A chapter by

Marjorie Miller and Juanita Darling, both formerly with The Los Angeles Times,

Mexico City bureau, also explores the

financial and political interests of Emilio

Azcarraga's Televisa empire and the

growing Mexican influence on Spanish

language news broadcasting in the

United States. Under the North American

Free Trade Agreement, Orme says, there

is no "level playing field." U.S. law permits

To order any book reviewed or advertised in Foreign Affairs, call 800-255-2665.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS July/August 1997 [*57]

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