Elizabeth I: The Shrewdness of Virtue

Jasper Ridley. Fromm International, $16 (391pp) ISBN 978-0-88064-110-4

The author views the Virgin Queen as a manipulator, frequently indecisive and mistaken in judgment, at considerable cost to England--but during her reign England became the mightiest country in the Western world. ``Ridley here broadens the reader's understanding of Elizabeth I as a woman who prevailed through `shrewdness,' '' observed PW. Photos. (May)

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