Frederick the Great: A Life in Deed and Letters

Poet and soldier, misanthrope and philosopher, Frederick the Great was a contradictory, almost unfathomable, man. His conquests made him one of the most formidable and feared leaders of his era. But as a patron of artists and intellectuals, Frederick recreated Berlin as one of the continent's grea [...]
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Poet and soldier, misanthrope and philosopher, Frederick the Great was a contradictory, almost unfathomable, man. His conquests made him one of the most formidable and feared leaders of his era. But as a patron of artists and intellectuals, Frederick recreated Berlin as one of the continent's great cities and matched his state's reputation for military ferocity with one for cultural achievement. Though history remembers Frederick as a "Potsdam Führer," but his father more rightly earned the title. When, as a youth, Frederick attempted to flee the elder man's brutality, the punishment was to watch the execution of his friend and co-conspirator, Katte. Though a subsequent compromise allowed Frederick to take the throne in 1740, he would remain true unto himself: his tastes for music, poetry, and architecture would match the significance of his military triumphs in the Seven Years' War. Drawing on the most recent scholarship, Giles MacDonogh's fresh, authoritative biography gives us the fully rounded portrait yet of an often misunderstood king.