William of Germany

In 1913, as Europe teetered on the edge of catastrophe, Stanley Shaw turned his attention to the man who embodied the tensions of the age: Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor. Written while Wilhelm still ruled, this biography offers an invaluable window into the mind of a monarch whose ambitions and anxieties would soon ignite the First World War. Shaw examines Wilhelm's tumultuous upbringing, his complicated relationship with his British relatives, and the political machinery of Imperial Germany. The result is both a portrait of a man and a meditation on the fragile architecture of European power.