A different view of Churchill.

Definitive assertions of historical "truth" aren’t always trustworthy, not because socialistic subversives like the late Howard Zinn are perversely motivated by spite to puncture those childishly simplistic myths that help us navigate a complicated world, but precisely because the world is so complicated. The ones who insist on reminding us of it are essential, although routinely villified. They're my personal heroes.

Johann Hari's New York Times review of the book, "Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made," by Richard Toye, demonstrates these shades of gray murkiness as they pertain to the familiar hagiography accorded Winston Churchill, succinctly summarized by Hari in this sentence:

“(Churchill) may have been a thug, but he knew a greater thug when he saw one — and we may owe our freedom today to this wrinkle in history.”

The Two Churchills

Winston Churchill is remembered for leading Britain through her finest hour — but what if he also led the country through her most shameful one? What if, in addition to rousing a nation to save the world from the Nazis, he fought for a raw white supremacy and a concentration camp network of his own? This question burns through Richard Toye’s superb, unsettling new history, “Churchill’s Empire” — and is even seeping into the Oval Office.