Jonathan Schneer
Author of The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
About the Author
Jonathan Schneer is professor of modern British history at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
Works by Jonathan Schneer
The Lockhart Plot: Love, Betrayal, Assassination and Counter-Revolution in Lenin's Russia (2020) 26 copies, 1 review
Associated Works
Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity (Studies in Imperialism) (1999) — Contributor — 7 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Schneer, Jonathan
- Legal name
- Schneer, Jonathan
- Birthdate
- 1948-08-09
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Columbia University (Ph.D|1978)
McGill University (BA|1971) - Occupations
- historian
professor - Organizations
- Georgia Institute of Technology
Yale University - Awards and honors
- National Jewish Book Award (2010)
- Short biography
- Dr. Jonathan Schneer, who received his BA from McGill University in 1971 and his PhD from Columbia University in 1978, is the modern British historian at Georgia Tech in the School of History and Sociology. He is a co-editor of two books, and the author of six more, including London 1900; The Imperial Metropolis, The Thames: England's River and most recently The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict which won a 2010 National Jewish Book Award. He has published articles in leading scholarly journals and collections of essays. He was a founding member of the Radical History Review and served as its book review editor for seven years. He also served for many years on the editorial board of Twentieth Century British History. He is a member of the advisory board of the London Journal. He has received fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies and from numerous Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In 2003 he was the Visiting Senior Research Fellow at St. John's College, Oxford. At Georgia Tech he teaches modern British and modern European history to undergraduate and graduate students. His book about Winston Churchill's War Cabinet will be published by Basic Books in the US in April, 2015 and by Oneworld Press in the UK in March, 2015.
http://www.hsoc.gatech.edu/people/fac... - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- New York, New York, USA
- Places of residence
- Atlanta, Georgia, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
The Lockhart Plot: Love, Betrayal, Assassination and Counter-Revolution in Lenin's Russia by Jonathan Schneer
I first heard of the Lockhart Plot, as many others will have done, in the British television series from the 1980s, Reilly: Ace of Spies. That was a largely fictionalised version of the story, but to be fair the story itself reads like fiction.
Bruce Lockhart, a young and very talented British diplomat travelled to Russia in 1918 to make a deal with the Bolsheviks: stay in the world war on Britain’s side and we will help you. When that didn’t pan out, he switched sides and decided, show more together with a handful of his associates (including the notorious Sidney Reilly) and suitcases full of cash, to overthrow the Soviet regime.
Looking back at how it all turned out, it seems an inevitable failure and Lockhart was crazy to try it. But at the time, the idea of bribing the Latvian soldiers who were tasked with guarding the Bolshevik leaders in the Kremlin — combined with the landing of British troops in northern Russia, the attempted coup by the legendary terrorist Boris Savinkov, the anti-German uprising of the Left Social Revolutionaries, and the assassination attempt on Lenin — may have seemed more plausible.
The Lockhart plot is one of the great “what ifs” of the history of the twentieth century and Jonathan Schneer has done an outstanding job telling the story (as much as it can be hold — and there is much that we do not know) well. Highly recommended. show less
Bruce Lockhart, a young and very talented British diplomat travelled to Russia in 1918 to make a deal with the Bolsheviks: stay in the world war on Britain’s side and we will help you. When that didn’t pan out, he switched sides and decided, show more together with a handful of his associates (including the notorious Sidney Reilly) and suitcases full of cash, to overthrow the Soviet regime.
Looking back at how it all turned out, it seems an inevitable failure and Lockhart was crazy to try it. But at the time, the idea of bribing the Latvian soldiers who were tasked with guarding the Bolshevik leaders in the Kremlin — combined with the landing of British troops in northern Russia, the attempted coup by the legendary terrorist Boris Savinkov, the anti-German uprising of the Left Social Revolutionaries, and the assassination attempt on Lenin — may have seemed more plausible.
The Lockhart plot is one of the great “what ifs” of the history of the twentieth century and Jonathan Schneer has done an outstanding job telling the story (as much as it can be hold — and there is much that we do not know) well. Highly recommended. show less
Superbly written history of a period most people think they know well, but will find really don't. This book explodes many myths about Winston's Churchill's war cabinet, the eclectic mix of politicians from all sides that Churchill assembled in 1940, as Britain faced its darkest hour. It has always been generally believed that this body of men put their differences behind them for the sake of the war effort, but Schneer blows this apart, showing that personal and political rivalries show more continued. The book is ripe with big personalities and big egos jostling for position and favour with Churchill, or even plotting to undermine him. The myth that Churchill was unassailably popular for the duration of the war is also shattered, as Schneer shows how his massive appeal during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz faded as the danger to Britain lessened, aided in part by Churchill's own irascible personality. He even came under serious threat of being toppled, first by the high-minded independent socialist Stafford Cripps, then by his close friend, the avaricious Canadian-born magnate Lord Beaverbrook. Churchill saw off both these challengers, but was eventually brought down by his failure to satisfy the public's desire for major post-war economic reconstruction, masterminded by Labour leader Clement Attlee and firebrand Herbert Morrison. The book is fast-paced, never dull, and the clash of personalities is captured in exquisite detail. This is a really top-class piece of historical writing. show less
***.5
The actual Balfour declaration is a single paragraph, so my first question is why is this book so long. The second question is why is it being blamed for the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which the previous book I read on the subject (Jerusalem 1913) clearly demonstrates that the tension was already well underway by that point. That book focused on the relations between the Jewish and Arab residents of Palestine under Ottoman rule at the time. This one starts out with a broader show more view, going in depth into the Arab politics in the larger region and their relations with the Ottomans and British, against the backdrop of WWI.
It really gets deep into the weeds of British foreign policy, diplomacy with France, profiles of a bevy of minor historical figures, a ton of correspondence, and reams of documentation. The sorts of minutia that would really only be interesting to a history of political science major. For everyone else, a stripped down version with just the salient points would have been more interesting and enjoyable.
The TL;DR version is that Britain was still in full Evil Empire Mode, leveraging its power to simultaneously appease and exploit the Jews and the Arabs, maintaining British influence in the region while thwarting France and Russia and using them all as pawns to fight against the Ottomans in WWI. Palestine, being somewhat in the middle of all that double, triple, and quadruple dealing, was setup to be a nexus of conflict that still hasn’t been resolved a century later.
Audiobook: Serviceable stuffy high-brow British accent, the sort you'd picture narrating a 14-part BBC lecture series about WWI, predictably committing the oratory equivalent of a war crime on every foreign name and word. show less
The actual Balfour declaration is a single paragraph, so my first question is why is this book so long. The second question is why is it being blamed for the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which the previous book I read on the subject (Jerusalem 1913) clearly demonstrates that the tension was already well underway by that point. That book focused on the relations between the Jewish and Arab residents of Palestine under Ottoman rule at the time. This one starts out with a broader show more view, going in depth into the Arab politics in the larger region and their relations with the Ottomans and British, against the backdrop of WWI.
It really gets deep into the weeds of British foreign policy, diplomacy with France, profiles of a bevy of minor historical figures, a ton of correspondence, and reams of documentation. The sorts of minutia that would really only be interesting to a history of political science major. For everyone else, a stripped down version with just the salient points would have been more interesting and enjoyable.
The TL;DR version is that Britain was still in full Evil Empire Mode, leveraging its power to simultaneously appease and exploit the Jews and the Arabs, maintaining British influence in the region while thwarting France and Russia and using them all as pawns to fight against the Ottomans in WWI. Palestine, being somewhat in the middle of all that double, triple, and quadruple dealing, was setup to be a nexus of conflict that still hasn’t been resolved a century later.
Audiobook: Serviceable stuffy high-brow British accent, the sort you'd picture narrating a 14-part BBC lecture series about WWI, predictably committing the oratory equivalent of a war crime on every foreign name and word. show less
Found this book while looking for another with a similar name. This book is a non-fictional account of the 1926 British General Strike, when nearly three million workers walked out in support of coal miners facing wage cuts and longer hours. Schneer covers the strike from many different perspectives: labor unions, government leaders, strike breakers, and the ordinary man. Schneer is a good story teller. Schneer’s central argument—that despite the scale and potential of the 1926 strike, show more both labor leaders and the government acted cautiously, preventing it from escalating into a true revolutionary crisis. There were chapters that were dense and technical and seemed to be a foreign language if one was not familiar with British labor history, but all in all a very readable book. 426 pages show less
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- Works
- 11
- Also by
- 2
- Members
- 740
- Popularity
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- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
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- ISBNs
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