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Frederick the Great, The Magnificent Enigma
Frederick the Great The Magnificent Enigma Author:Robert B. Asprey Frederick the Great? A title perhaps unmerited by the standards of his predecessors. Yet Frederick of Prussia was a central figure in warmaking, administration, economic development, and legal codification.....He was at once Frederick the general, Frederick the statesman, Frederick the economist, Frederick the intellectual; each characterizati... more »on is incomplete. Frederick did not see himself as playing a variety of roles on different stages before different audiences....[He] developed and sustained a self-image as the supremely rational actor of Enlightenment imagery, a roi-connetable, contributing uniquely to the development of his state and the pattern of history. Consistency in external perceptions of him, consistency in his own behavior, mattered little to this supremely inner-centered man. ----from the Foreword by Dennis E. Showalter« less