Home › Books › The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign…
The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III
by
40/99
Critics' Rating Index
82/99
Readers' Rating Index
80/99
Scholars' Citation Index
66/99
Volume of Reviews
71/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
The last king of America, George III, has been ridiculed as a complete disaster who frittered away the colonies and went mad in his old age. The truth is much more nuanced and fascinating--and will completely change the way readers and historians view his reign and legacy. Most Americans dismiss George III as a buffoon--a heartless and terrible monarch with few, if any, redeeming qualities. The best-known modern interpretation of him is Jonathan Groff's preening, spitting, and pompous take in Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway masterpiece. But this deeply unflattering characterization is rooted in the prejudiced and brilliantly persuasive opinions of eighteenth-century revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who needed to make the king appear evil in order to achieve their own political aims. After combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of never-before-published correspondence, award-winning historian Andrew Roberts has uncovered the truth: George III was in fact a wise, humane, and even enlightened monarch who was beset by talented enemies, debilitating mental illness, incompetent ministers, and disastrous luck. In The Last King of America, Roberts paints a deft and nuanced portrait of the much-maligned monarch and outlines his accomplishments, which have been almost universally forgotten. Two hundred and forty-five years after the end of George III's American rule, it is time for Americans to look back on their last king with greater understanding: to see him as he was and to come to terms with the last time they were ruled by a monarch.
Reviews
"What about the king's madness?"
"With insight and aplomb, Roberts completes his mission, revealing the king to have been a conventional, conservative gentleman, uxorious husband and father of 15 ..."
"Although The Last King of America effectively refutes Paine, Jefferson and, for that matter, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Roberts is asserting what 20th- and 21st-century historians already know: George III was not a tyrant who lost the American empire; he respected the British Constitution and deferred to Parliament ..."
"[a] meticulously researched revisionist biography ..."
"This is not the first revisionist treatment of the monarch...but Roberts's extensive use of primary-source letters, essays, and other personal documents recently made available by the Georgian Papers Programme offers much fresh evidence that George III was not the arrogant and vindictive tyrant portrayed in popular culture, but rather an intelligent and conscientious king whose idealistic goals were stymied by political frictions and the misfortune of mental illness ..."
"George who emerges from these pages is rational, responsible and, ultimately, regal."
"Vividly detailed, the author's life of George is comfortably situated in the context of British, European, and Colonial history."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!