For anyone who thinks they know a lot about Angela Merkel; for anyone who knows nothing about Angela Merkel—pick up this book and do not put it down until the very last page ... informative [and] fascinating ... While many biographies often overflow with dry historical family and personal data, this one does not ... Marton’s research focuses on Merkel’s politics as Merkel rises from growing up behind the Berlin Wall through to 1989, to moving away from a scientific life into one of politics. This is exactly what keeps the pages turning ... It is safe to say that Marton’s prologue and epilogue sum up Merkel’s astounding political life, and yet all the chapters in between are what provide the immaculate details of how she came to be Angela Merkel ... a definite must-read!
Marton’s new biography, The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel, is a bit like Merkel herself: calm, dispassionate, not afraid to bore us. Many readers will find it a balm. It’s instructive to spend time in Merkel’s competent and humane company ... Merkel didn’t talk to Marton for this book. When the author does get a quote out of someone close to Merkel, it’s often a banality...But give Marton credit. She has doggedly retraced Merkel’s trail, and the story she brings is a good one ... On occasion The Chancellor veers toward hagiography, but it steps quickly away again. Marton is a critical observer, especially of Merkel’s tendency not to articulate her deeper feelings, her frequent failure to win over hearts as well as minds ... This book is a bedtime story of a queasy sort, or so it can seem. It’s as if Marton, via her subject, were tucking the old liberal order in and wishing it a good night, for tomorrow it may die.
Marton carefully traces Merkel’s journey from the hinterlands of East Germany to the center of power in Berlin. A fluent writer, Marton seeks to unravel the Merkel mystery by penetrating the cordon sanitaire that she has erected around her personal life ... a masterpiece of discernment and insight ... For all her admiration of Merkel’s prodigious talents, Marton has not composed a valentine ... For anyone seeking a guide to Merkel’s improbable odyssey, this book is it.
... an immensely readable and substantial contribution to the current Merkel anthology. This biography contextualizes both the public and private persona and makes clear that Merkel’s reign as chancellor goes well beyond the German borders ... The most consequential decision that Merkel made as crisis manager was, of course, providing asylum for approximately one million refugees in 2015. Marton does a stellar job of laying out the moral, political, and social implications of this choice ... After finishing the book, readers will likely feel that the description of Merkel as 'elusive' no longer serves. It becomes apparent that Merkel’s intentions are usually hidden in plain sight. Often, it takes a writer of Marton’s caliber to reveal what has been in front of us the whole time.
This smart, readable biography chronicles Merkel’s 'remarkable odyssey,' weaving her career with the context of European politics of the day. The personal side of that journey is knit from a thousand threads of details revealed over the years. But even in an era when social media makes it seem possible to scrutinize every moment and every movement, the very private Merkel manages to keep part of herself out of sight.
Perhaps after Merkel has left office proper there will be a biography that will lift the veil on her private motivations; Marton’s diligently compiled but often overtly reverential chronological overview is not it. In spite of numerous interviews with close advisers, touted as 'circumventing the chancellor’s extraordinary need for control', there are few revelations here that cast a new light on her leadership ... At times, there is a slightly comical sense that the qualities Merkel’s biographer finds most intriguing are also those that most elude her: Marton, who also grew up east of the Iron Curtain and went on to become an ABC News foreign correspondent and marry the influential late US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, cannot help but slide her own story into the footnotes. Not quite the lesson one would have expected a writer to draw from studying a politician who managed to command authority by leaning out rather than in ... Perhaps while we wait for Merkel’s inner circle to go public and help produce the first truly illuminating biography of her tenure, we need storytellers to fill in the gaps.
... an impressively researched but, in many respects, devotional work—the reflection of a worshipful establishment consensus that will eventually seem absurd ... The author covers a considerable amount of ground in this area concisely, mostly approvingly and too often uncritically. One of Ms. Merkel’s most significant decisions, for instance, may not shed quite the light on the enigmatic chancellor that her biographer clearly expects ... Ms. Marton cannot resist analyzing her career from a feminist perspective, and sometimes appears unable to resist resorting to language marked by a facile misandry. In this context, as occasionally elsewhere, Ms. Marton passes over awkward facts that risk muddying a shiny narrative ... Marton does excel, however, when she turns her attention from the political to the 'human' account she promised, notably with deftly drawn depictions of Ms. Merkel’s early years, personality and daily working life, depictions made all the more interesting by how little most of the public knows about what makes Ms. Merkel tick.
The English-speaking world has had a long wait for its first seriously good book on Angela Merkel, even though she has been chancellor for 16 years and on the front line of German politics for 31. The Chancellor, a biography published with much fanfare by the Hungarian-American journalist Kati Marton, is manifestly not that book ... if any foreign observer were in a position to do it justice, you might think it would be Marton ... This does at least deliver a fund of entertaining anecdotes ... he book correctly underlines the importance of Merkel’s Protestant faith and upbringing on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall...It is especially strong on her distinctive and extensive reading of history ... Marton is also good value on Merkel’s mind games with Vladimir Putin and her relationships with three US presidents ... Yet this book is fatally undermined by two cardinal faults. The first is that the author is too close to her subject...Her occasional criticisms are sluiced away by a sickly tide of hagiography ... The second and graver problem is Marton’s raunchily casual relationship with the facts. She drops clanger after cast-iron clanger ... Presumably these errors will be corrected in future editions, unless the publisher does the decent thing and pulps every copy of this balderdash. Harder to fix, though, is the irremediable incuriosity and ignorance of German and European politics they betray ... The book’s account of virtually every aspect of Germany’s political system, from coalition formation to Covid policy, is variously shallow, incomplete, misleading or flatly wrong ... On the back of the book a puff quote from a Pulitzer prizewinning writer hails Marton’s 'signature superpower of rigorous research'. It seems this superpower does not extend to footnotes, basic fact-checking, kicking the tyres on apocryphal anecdotes or indeed reading German newspapers. Either that or the author has been freebasing kryptonite these past four years.
Marton’s problem is that most of the interviewees are as puzzled by Merkel as the rest of us. Quoting Hillary Clinton at length looks good, but you never get the sense that Clinton really knew the Chancellor. And maybe Merkel’s personal story isn’t that important. Perhaps there is no inner Merkel we cannot really see ... glides through her political apprenticeship at such a pace you’d almost wonder if the author is hiding something. Merkel goes from wandering into a party office to being a cabinet minister seemingly without a trace. Merkel must have done something.
... engaging ... wholly sympathetic ... It is a riveting story, adroitly told, full of engrossing anecdotes and rich details, derived not from conversations with Merkel herself but pieced together from published sources as well as discussions with friends and others in her orbit. That Merkel would not meet with a well-connected, sympathetic, and prestigious biographer offers an important clue to Merkel’s personality: absent vanity, uncompromising integrity, and the Lutheran virtues of humility and simplicity. It is the absence of charisma that makes her charismatic.
This is the best English-language biography of her rise from a tough and traditional family, through her career as a physical chemist in communist East Germany, to her current renown—but it is far from definitive. As with most traditional journalistic accounts, Marton’s book focuses a great deal on what Merkel said and did at various critical meetings, attributing her success to her intelligence and tenacity and her failures to her idealistic moral courage. The reader learns far less about the electoral, partisan, diplomatic, and technical constraints under which Merkel acted. The picture is further limited by the author’s curious decision to focus almost exclusively on German relations with the United States and Russia, thereby excluding economic diplomacy, climate change, China, the European Union, and the developing world—not to mention German domestic politics, about which the book says hardly anything.
The author effectively tells how Merkel is often acutely reminded of Germany’s past and strives to ensure that Germany is a moral leader, resists authoritarianism, and remains a part of the European Union and a key member of the global community ... A fascinating look at a highly influential leader. Recommended for readers interested in world politics.
... glowing ... Though the text is somewhat short on criticism, Marton clearly knows her subject and writes smoothly, pulling back the curtain on an enigmatic, significant world figure ... A human portrait more than a political one that amply captures the essence of a moral, determined leader.
... meticulous and even-handed ... Incisive analyses of Merkel’s relationships with other world leaders, including Vladimir Putin, shed light on her geopolitical views and tactics, though her private motivations remain somewhat mysterious. Still, this is a lucid and accessible introduction to 'the most powerful woman in the world.'
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
