Christopher Clark's "Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Life in Power" is a short, fascinating
and accessible biography of one of the 20th century's most important figures. K
ing of Prussia, German Emperor, war leader and defeated exile, Kaiser Wilhelm II
was one of the most important - and most controversial - figures in the history
of twentieth-century Europe. But how much power did he really have? Christopher
Clark, winner of the Wolfson prize for his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, fo
llows Kaiser Wilhelm's political career from his youth at the Hohenzollern court
through the turbulent decades of the Wilhelmine era into global war and the col
lapse of Germany in 1918, to his last days.
