Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780393058048)

Paul Preston, the author of the definitive biography Franco, explores the political and personal mysteries of the Spanish monarch's life in Juan Carlos, a story of unprecedented sweep and exquisite detail. Handed over to the Franco regime as a young boy, Juan Carlos was raised according to authoritarian traditions designed to make him a cornerstone of the dictatorship. How then did he later emerge as an emphatic defender of the democracy that began to form after Franco's death? In his peerless voice, Preston provides the details necessary to answer this central question, examining the king's troubled relationship with his father and his vital work in consolidating parliamentary democracy in Spain. What begins as the story of one monarch becomes at once a history of modern Spain and an indispensable exegesis of how democracies come to be.


Author: Paul Preston
ISBN-10: 0393058042
ISBN-13: 9780393058048
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Language: English
Published: 06/17/2004
Pages: 614
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.08lbs
Size: 9.28h x 6.52w x 1.38d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 02/01/2004 pg. 62
Booklist 03/15/2004 pg. 1260
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2004 pg. 318
Publishers Weekly 04/12/2004 pg. 46
Library Journal 02/01/2004