I'm currently reading Barbara W. Tuchman's The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution.
I was struck by her description of Spain's Philip II and his uncanny resemblance to another "II" that we are all too familiar with in this country.
She writes,
"The ruler, Philip II--that "odious personage", as Motley, classic historian of the revolt, cannot refrain in his Protestant Victorian rectitude from calling him--was himself too narrow and rigid to recognize as rebellion the trouble he was stirring up for himself; Philip could think only in terms of being ordained by God to root out Protestantism, and he rejected any consideration that might suggest an obstacle in the way of this task"
and continues.....
"The sack [in 1576 of Antwerp] was precipitated by a mutiny of Spanish troops who had not received their promised pay for 22 months. Philip II, having transferred the cost of the war into a huge debt owed to the merchants and magnates of Spain, had declared his exchequer in bankruptcy in 1575 and had received a dispensation from the Pope permitting him to revoke all promises or commitments "lest he should be ruined by usury while combating the heretics." With his customary lack of sense, the richest monarch of his time applied the dispensation to non-payment of his army on the theory that, as he was God's instrument for crushing heresy, whatever he did, whether or not was wise, was right. Like most of Philip's policy judgments, it turned against himself."
Because my public high school education didn't exactly teach me much history, I was until now unaware of the parallels between the Dutch provinces' struggle for independence from Spain and the American colonists' struggle against England which happened 200 years later. I was also unaware of how important the Dutch mercantile system was to the Revolution. Washington most likely would not have survived the first winter without Dutch supplies of provisions and ammunition.
Tuchman is a favorite popular author of history books. I only took one history class at The College of Wooster and so have happily avoided the dry and uninteresting (sometimes revisionist) histories to which scholars are beholden. I get to read Gibbon, Tuchman, Boorstin in happy bliss.
I encourage all curious minds to take in any or all of Tuchman's works. The journalist/homemaker was a 2-time Pulitzer Prize winner. I'm sure that it is because of her separation from academia that she wrote such dynamic and engrossing books.