Books: Bravura Performance

A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES, Vol. Ill: THE AGE OF REVOLUTION (402 pp.)—Winston S. Churchill—Dodd, Mead ($6).

Two typical qualities mark the third volume of Winston Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples (there is a final volume on The Nineteenth Century yet to come). One quality is control; Churchill manages to grasp a huge and chaotic period (1688-1815) without ever letting a war, a revolution or a leading character get out of hand in the plot. The other quality is a kind of historical cosmopolitanism scarcely to be found in any other writer; Churchill ranges from English county politics to American...