The Last President of Europe: Emmanuel Macron's Race to Revive France and Save the World

Macron quickly saw Europe's leadership problem, and with Drozdiak's help, Americans can quickly see it too: Europe has too many presidents and prime ministers to be a global player. Their nations cannot cooperate like American states, whose governors are peers who need not agree about American action as a global power. Macron clearly sees Europe needs a President to become a global power, but 27 leaders and their voters stand in the way. Drozdiak conveys Macron's vision with understanding, plus sympathy about 27 leaders blocking action.

I especially liked the breadth of vision that came from focusing not simply on Macron's presidency but on conveying in some detail the context of his presidency including other leaders such as Putin, Xi, Trump,and Merkl. The book is entertaining but serious in that it does not waste the reader's time on the details of Macron's life. Also, it's very well written.

Mr. Drozdiak gives the reader an appreciation of the complex issues Macron faces as he seeks to make France more competitive and create a more united Europe. The book shows that Macron has imagination and the courage of his convictions.

I could not put this book down. It brought you closer to one of the great minds of our time. A great read.

Here you are immersed amidst the problems and vicissitudes of European politics, from France’s sclerotic economy to shaking up its society, to the upheaval of the Yellow Vests, to the disconnection between the Paris elite and the people, to Brexit, to the influx of asylum seekers, to “For God’s sake, Angela!”, to Trump being uninformed, and to China’s surreptitious intrusion, just to name a few. In the middle of it, there is the 39-year-old novice President engaged in invigorating France and the other European nations and trying to bend the ear of Trump, Putin, Erdogan, and Xi Jinping, not to be unprepared for looming dangers of the future. This superb report by William Drozdiak will introduce you to a man who is no less than a blessing for France and the European Union. He is a new, splendorous light on the firmament, highly intelligent, gifted and solid in his goodwill and idealism. His wake-up call for Europe has been met with only limited success, but his intellectual excellence and youth predict his prolonged influence on the fate of Europe and the world.

A breezy read about a remarkable leader’s ideas and the challenges Europe faces to avoid falling back into “Kleinstaaterei” — small scale political division — and irrelevance in the global power play. The only thing missing in this lucid analysis are the trio of women leaders “Merkel, von der Leyen and Lagarde” who are in key positions of power at this critical juncture of the Covid pandemic and may yet lead Europe into a new era of cooperation based on Macron’s ideas and urgent calls for action. As Charles de Gaulle said: Nationalism in Europe means war. Let’s pray the European women leaders prevail and help save the EU and liberal democracy in the face of American, Chinese and Russian attempts to undo the Union.

Bill Drozdiak has written a lively look at one of the world's most dynamic leaders. His book is important because it takes on the world as a global chessboard with a French president at the center and who fully understands the stakes for the Western democratic world. The chapter on China especially important and revealing, the outcome of the strategic chess match with China will affect us all. I have been covering international relations for forty plus years, lived in Europe and Asia, and feel this work vital to understanding the global future and what may happen next.

An insightful and balanced review of Macron's rise to power and his role as the predominant champion of the continuing strategic necessity of the European Project to enable European countries to viably compete in a world increasingly dominated by large powers such as China and the US.

A good account of the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, and his world, up to about autumn 2019.We are taken from Macron's 2017 victory in the French presidential election through his experiences in France, Europe and the world. It's pretty much a straight recounting of events and encounters -- not all that much that wouldn't already have been known to anyone reasonably conversant with general current affairs since 2016. France does seem a particularly unforgiving and thankless place for well-intentioned politicians: Macron had (at the time COVID-19 struck) to a great extent done what he said he would, including facing down the rail unions, reforming pensions and reducing unemployment. But he still attracts a particularly extreme form of hatred, best exemplified by some of those at the fringes of the Gilets Jaunes protestors.From the start, Macron's quid pro quo was that, if he sorted out France's economic competitiveness, he would expect Germany to play ball on the political and fiscal integration of the European Union. Thus would the Franco-German locomotive regain traction. Macron's guiding star is that, to survive in a hostile multipolar world, Europe must become a unified great power or be trampled on. By and large Germany didn't play ball -- at least until recently, COVID-19 having changed the rules. With Germany now (July 2020) having accepted the principle of mutualised EU debt, it remains to be seen if a European confederation might, in 10 or 20 years, be the result. It's something that I as a Europhile -- and a supporter of the civilised 'good guys' -- would like to see, but suspect I never will.On the world stage, a chapter each is given to Macron's dealings with Trump, Putin and Xi. One is left with the feeling of lack of sympathy on the part of these three for the efforts of the civilised liberal leader of a medium-sized (although nuclear) power. Disdain might be too strong, but we do live in a nasty era of might-is-right nationalist populism -- and there is little receptivity toward the intelligent, nuanced, brand of foreign policy that Macron espouses. For all his efforts, he has little to show by way of actual influence over the US, Russia and China.The Last President is good as a straight recounting of recent history. It's a bit light, I think, on analysis -- what it all means and where we might be going. The book suffers from having been in effect blown out of the water by COVID-19, the onset of which in Europe just followed publication. And, in the end, it's pessimistic: if Macron cannot bully, cajole and otherwise pull Europe together, he will end up as the last de-facto leader of a has-been Old Continent.