Captains and the Kings (Caldwell)

Captains and the Kings 
Taylor Caldwell, 1973
Random House
816 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780449205624


Summary
Captains and the Kings is the saga of young Joseph Armagh, recently of Ireland, who promised his dying mother to care for his younger siblings. Landing in Boston, Joseph's determination carries him through years shady-deal making and his gradual accumulation of wealth and power.

In this work, Caldwell takes on the global power brokers. Running through the story line is a description of the way the international financiers and industrialists (all private consortiums owned by an elite of the world's richest families and persons) hijack governments around the globe; instigating wars and gaining control over the warring countries through manipulation of the enormous debts incurred during a war.

While a disclaimer states that all persons portrayed in the book are fictional, many see the story as loosely based on the life of Joseph Kennedy, scion of President John F. Kennedy, Robert, Senators Robert F. and Teddy Kennedy. (From Wikipedia.)

Captains and the Kings was made into a 1976 TV mini-series.

Author Bio
• Birth—September 7, 1900
• Where—Manchester, England, UK
• Raised—in the US
• Death—August 30, 1985
• Where—Greenwich, Connecticut
• Education—University of Buffalo (New York)
• Awards—1948, National League of American Pen Women
   Gold Medal; 1950, Grand Prix Chatvain


Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell was an Anglo-American novelist and prolific author of popular fiction, also known by the pen names Marcus Holland and Max Reiner, and by her married name of J. Miriam Reback.

In her fiction, she often used real historical events or persons. Taylor Caldwell's best-known works include Dynasty of Death (1938), an epic story about intrigues and alliances of two Western Pennsylvania families involved in the manufacture of armaments, Dear and Glorious Physician (about St.Luke), and Captains and the Kings. Her last major novel, Answer as a Man, appeared in 1980.

Taylor Caldwell was born in Manchester, England, into a family of Scottish background. Her family descended from the Scottish clan of MacGregor of which the Taylors are a subsidiary clan. In 1907 she emigrated to the United States with her parents and younger brother. Her father died shortly after the move, and the family struggled. At the age of eight she started to write stories, and in fact wrote her first novel, The Romance of Atlantis, at the age of twelve (although it was to remain unpublished until 1975). In 1919 she married William F. Combs, had Peggy and divorced in 1931. Between the years 1918 and 1919 she served in the United States Navy Reserve. From 1923 to 1924 she was a court reporter in New York State Department of Labor in Buffalo, New York and from 1924 to 1931 a member of the Board of Special Inquiry at the Department of Justice in Buffalo.

In 1931 she graduated from the University at Buffalo, and in 1934 began a collaboration with her second husband, Marcus Reback, to write several bestsellers, the first of which was Dynasty of Death. During her career as a writer Caldwell's books sold over 30 million copies. She received several awards, among them the National League of American Pen Women Gold Medal (1948), Buffalo Evening News Award (1949), and Grand Prix Chatvain (1950).

Caldwell was married four times altogether—the third time to William Everett Stancell, and the fourth time to William Robert Prestie (who died in 2002). She had two daughters, Judith and Mary (Judith died in 1979).

Caldwell was an outspoken conservative and for a time wrote for the John Birch Society's monthly journal American Opinion and even associated with the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby. Her memoir, On Growing Up Tough, appeared in 1971, consisting of many edited-down articles from American Opinion. Caldwell continued writing until 1980, when a stroke left her deaf and unable to speak. She died of pulmonary failure in Greenwich, Connecticut on September 2, 1985. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
(Older books have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Amazon for helpful customer reviews.)

Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get your discussion started for Captains and the Kings:

1. What drives Joseph Armagh—his promise to care for his siblings, his bitter experiences as an Irish immigrant, his own personal ambitions—or all three? Do you see him as an admirable character...or not?

2. Talk about life at the orphanage and how it affects Sean and Mary Regina.

3. What were the hardships faced by the newly arrived immigrants in America? How did their experiences mirror those of other newly arrived immigrants, perhaps your own ancestors?

4. Discuss the roles that the titans of industry play in this work. Do you feel Caldwell's writing is biased or objective? Are or were political systems dominated by major corporations; in other words, have governments, even democracies, had a history of doing the bidding of private consortiums, made up of powerful financiers and industrialists?

5. Can you see the historical parallels in this work to Joseph Kennedy and his sons, Jack, Bobby, and Teddy?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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